The wife and I received a bunch of free tickets to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival and since we couldn't use them all I offered them up to my current gaming group. Even if we could go multiple weekends to use them up, we don't want to. While the RenFest is fun, it's fun in small quantities for us as we are former SCAdians and we've "been there, done that" A LOT. Offering up the tickets to my friends, I was reminded why many hobbies are a lot easier than playing RPGs around a table. I've seen the following exchange happen anytime I have offered up RenFest tickets, or a day that I was going to play paintball, or run a D&D/CP2020/Rifts/Champions campaign, or go see a movie, or go to a book signing, or go to a Con (gaming, comic, or otherwise), or any other geeky pastime.
A month before the event - "You're doing what? Dude, I have ALWAYS wanted to do that! Count me in, I'll be there!" All of that I'd hear from about 10 people.
Three weeks before - "I'm still down, can't wait for it." But now I'm hearing this from only about 8 people.
Two weeks before - "Well, I really need to mow the lawn and give the cat a bath, but if I get that done early, I'll be there." And now we're down to only 5 people.
The week before - "I've been fighting a cold, and I've been meaning to visit my mom." Now 7 out of the original 10 people won't talk to me at all, and the last 3 are really cagey when I do talk to them.
The day of - One person (or none at all, which was always far more likely) shows up to join me to do whatever it was.
You may scoff and think that's not true, but I've seen this over so many years for so many different activities, that this is how I played paintball for a solid decade: I'd put it out when and where I was going to play, and then I'd go play with no one joining me. I'm just lucky that I was living in a city that the local paintball fields had decent enough "rec" or "walk on" players that I'd still get to play. If I had to count on my friends showing up to play, I'd have been out there all by my lonesome because for the longest time, it was whoever showed up at the field, and none of my friends who said that they always wanted to play and this would be the best weekend to give it a try, blah blah blah. I learned long ago, that if I depended on others to pursue my hobbies, I would be sitting at home most weekends, not doing much of anything.
Which is a huge problem to play tabletop RPGs - you kind of need other people to show up to play or run an RPG. Oh sure, these days you've got Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds to play RPGs online, not forgetting MMORPGs and solo play videogame RPGs, but if what you want is that face to face connection, good luck getting a group of folks to show up consistently for long periods of time. What do you do? For me, I run as many games as I can and try not to be the one that is texting everyone the day of the game to say "sorry, can't make it, see you next week". I have had to do this - had to do it this past weekend, in fact, but I already had one player out of state, another who could only be there for 2 out of 5 hours due to a wedding, and still looking for a replacement for the 5th member of the group, so when I really didn't feel ready to run the game I dropped the text to everyone - but whether I've been a player and especially when I'm the GM/DM/whatnot, I just keep trying to be the most dependable of the group.
Please, don't get all disheartened and think it's something beyond your reach, otherwise none of us would have a gaming group to play with/run a game for. Just realize that people are never as brave to try new things, or as desirous to go live an experience, as they first profess to be. And for your other hobbies or geeky pursuits, those that you can pursue without your friends, you have to understand that even though you find them the most fun ever and said friends may even profess to want to do them with you, said activity may not be actually enjoyable to them and you may have to form new friendships in that hobby. Have no fear, you will make new friends, it may take some time, but it will happen.
To the rest of you out there, please, if you were excited about doing or trying something a month before, just go do it. As long as it's legal.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Friday, September 21, 2018
Is There Anything in 5e That I Like?
I seem to be very negative about the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and, well, I do find that it is not as fantastic as I hoped it would be. It has too much of 4th edition in it (and not the cool stuff that 4th edition brought out), and seems to be on easy mode, and it's very easy for players to make overpowered characters, and on and on. Is there anything, at all, that I do like?
Yep, there is.
What? Okay, fine. But before I get into what I like about 5th edition, you have to know that I used to participate in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and that in that organization, I used to fight. In most places I would have to amend that I fought "heavy" but I generally forget that since I lived and fought in the Kingdom of Calontir and they never adopted the "light" style of SCA combat. If you're not familiar with what the SCA is, or what SCA "heavy" combat is, then I invite you to watch the following video from NBC News about the Society:
I retired most of a decade ago from the hobby, but I still feel that it's appropriate to mention that the SCA is not all about fighting, but it is the one activity that tends to be the most exciting to watch. With that, understand that I find that D&D's combat rules have been lacking in some particulars. Yes, yes, I enjoyed my time in armour, hefting a shield and swinging chunks of rattan at my friends, but I fully realize that even the SCA is not 100% accurate when it comes to recreating medieval armoured combat... but it's close, a lot closer than D&D is and has been in the past. Yes, yes, (I say that a lot to what I imagine to be your unvoiced questions, don't I?) D&D is at best an abstraction of armoured combat, and more worried about appearing more cinematic than realistic. But even knowing that, I've seen a few things in 5th that make my black, shriveled heart happy.
Oddly enough, what I've found recently that have made me want to play and not merely DM in 5th edition, are two feats. Many people seemed to take great umbrage with feats in 3rd edition, but I rather liked them (and Prestige Classes). 5e's feats have been "meh" at best, and too overpowered at their worst, but I've run across two that I really like - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master.
Polearm Master (found on page 168 of the 5e PHB, for those of you following from home) isn't as overpowered as, say, Great Weapon Master (basically, take disadvantage on your To Hit roll to double your Damage, and two other bonus bits on top of that? yup, overpowered), it simply makes the use of glaives, halberds, and quarterstaves more realistic. You get a bonus attack with the opposite end of the weapon (a simple 1d4 Damage), and a reaction attack whenever an opponent enters your reach (not just leaves it), both of which are very realistic. Fighting with polearms as long as I did (and I was fair to middlin' with them, not knight level, but deadly enough that people treated me with respect when I held my "boat oar" slashing spear in my hands), I learned to use the weapon's reach to my advantage by striking at ranges they couldn't reply, when possible, but also to be able to fight with a 6 foot weapon at ranges best described as "belly to belly". In fact, training to fight with polearm, and training others, I oft repeated that first contact with polearms is done with the sharp pokey bits, like a spear; the next step in is done with the sharp slashy bits, like a long axe; and the last step in is done with the butt spike (not totally unknown in period, but not terribly common), like daggers with 6 feet of handle on them.
If you want to see someone who is REALLY good with polearms (in other words, better than me) teach their techniques, you should watch the following video, and the two that follow it.
The other feat I particularly like in 5e, Dual Wielder, makes fighting with two, one-handed weapons viable in D&D. 3rd edition had decent rules and made florentine or "two stick" fighting possible, but did so with some very involved and complicated rules. Dual Wielder (page 165 in the PHB) as a feat makes the base Two-Weapon Fighting (page 195, also in the PHB) much more realistic and far simpler than 3rd edition - you can use non "light" weapons, you get a bonus to your AC, and something about drawing/stowing your weapons normally (which is nice, but not really important). Two sword fighters in the SCA, at least those who are good at the style, are whirling dervishes of thrown shots, counter-blows, mobile walls of sharp steel constantly attacking and fading.
Of course, everyone immediately thinks of wielding two swords (one in each hand), which is the classic definition of "florentine" fighting, but seeing this rule, I immediately thought of fighting sword and spear, or sword and axe, two classic Viking/Nordic/Norman/Anglo-Saxon fighting styles. With sword and spear, shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry (which commemorated the 1066 invasion of Anglo-Saxony by the Normans), you fight with a sword in your "on" hand (if you're right handed, right is your "on" hand) and a 6' or similar length spear in your "off" hand, the stabby bit pointed down. Holding your weapons in this way, you can stab at your opponent all the way at the end of your 6 feet and more of reach with the spear and use it up close as a very tall, thin shield, or choke up on it and stab at something closer to you. With sword and axe, you generally use a longer handled axe, generally 4' long, like a footman's axe or Danish bearded axe or even a shorter bardiche (use the stats for Battleaxe), and one with a butt spike on it. Like sword and spear, you fight sword and axe with sword in "on" and the axe in "off", using the beard or the scallop behind the bit in a bardiche as your handle, both to protect your "off" hand and to more easily punch with the axe blade. The butt spike you use like you would a spear, keeping your opponent at range. Both of the "off" weapons are versatile, and can be used two-handed without the sword.
The added bonus of using polearms, axes, and spears is that it is more realistic to use those weapons than swords. Yes, yes, when people think of armoured knights beating on each other, they think swords... but swords aren't really good against armour. Swords (both the iconic European longsword and Oriental katana, plus just about any other sword out there you can think of) were mostly used against unarmoured opponents, and everything else - spears which every civilization out there used because it's so easy to put a sharp point on a long stick, polearms which are all farming implements repurposed into medieval can openers, and axes got turned from chopping wood to chopping people - was what you used when you were facing someone with a decent amount of armour. Don't believe me? Check out any of the medieval arms manuals (Talhoffer is popular), or S.M. Stirling's fantastic Emberverse series of novels. If I were to rewrite the D&D rules, I'd focus more on spears - spears as the yardstick against which all other weapons are measured, spears doing more damage than swords (European longswords were used more as piercing weapons than slashing weapons back in the medieval period... why? because it was more effective that way), magical spears by the dozen, and replacing as much sword-bearing art with spear-bearing art as I can get away with. The iconic 5e fighter (seen below) is not bad, but still too much sword and not enough spear.
Yep, there is.
What? Okay, fine. But before I get into what I like about 5th edition, you have to know that I used to participate in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and that in that organization, I used to fight. In most places I would have to amend that I fought "heavy" but I generally forget that since I lived and fought in the Kingdom of Calontir and they never adopted the "light" style of SCA combat. If you're not familiar with what the SCA is, or what SCA "heavy" combat is, then I invite you to watch the following video from NBC News about the Society:
I retired most of a decade ago from the hobby, but I still feel that it's appropriate to mention that the SCA is not all about fighting, but it is the one activity that tends to be the most exciting to watch. With that, understand that I find that D&D's combat rules have been lacking in some particulars. Yes, yes, I enjoyed my time in armour, hefting a shield and swinging chunks of rattan at my friends, but I fully realize that even the SCA is not 100% accurate when it comes to recreating medieval armoured combat... but it's close, a lot closer than D&D is and has been in the past. Yes, yes, (I say that a lot to what I imagine to be your unvoiced questions, don't I?) D&D is at best an abstraction of armoured combat, and more worried about appearing more cinematic than realistic. But even knowing that, I've seen a few things in 5th that make my black, shriveled heart happy.
Oddly enough, what I've found recently that have made me want to play and not merely DM in 5th edition, are two feats. Many people seemed to take great umbrage with feats in 3rd edition, but I rather liked them (and Prestige Classes). 5e's feats have been "meh" at best, and too overpowered at their worst, but I've run across two that I really like - Dual Wielder and Polearm Master.
Polearm Master (found on page 168 of the 5e PHB, for those of you following from home) isn't as overpowered as, say, Great Weapon Master (basically, take disadvantage on your To Hit roll to double your Damage, and two other bonus bits on top of that? yup, overpowered), it simply makes the use of glaives, halberds, and quarterstaves more realistic. You get a bonus attack with the opposite end of the weapon (a simple 1d4 Damage), and a reaction attack whenever an opponent enters your reach (not just leaves it), both of which are very realistic. Fighting with polearms as long as I did (and I was fair to middlin' with them, not knight level, but deadly enough that people treated me with respect when I held my "boat oar" slashing spear in my hands), I learned to use the weapon's reach to my advantage by striking at ranges they couldn't reply, when possible, but also to be able to fight with a 6 foot weapon at ranges best described as "belly to belly". In fact, training to fight with polearm, and training others, I oft repeated that first contact with polearms is done with the sharp pokey bits, like a spear; the next step in is done with the sharp slashy bits, like a long axe; and the last step in is done with the butt spike (not totally unknown in period, but not terribly common), like daggers with 6 feet of handle on them.
If you want to see someone who is REALLY good with polearms (in other words, better than me) teach their techniques, you should watch the following video, and the two that follow it.
The other feat I particularly like in 5e, Dual Wielder, makes fighting with two, one-handed weapons viable in D&D. 3rd edition had decent rules and made florentine or "two stick" fighting possible, but did so with some very involved and complicated rules. Dual Wielder (page 165 in the PHB) as a feat makes the base Two-Weapon Fighting (page 195, also in the PHB) much more realistic and far simpler than 3rd edition - you can use non "light" weapons, you get a bonus to your AC, and something about drawing/stowing your weapons normally (which is nice, but not really important). Two sword fighters in the SCA, at least those who are good at the style, are whirling dervishes of thrown shots, counter-blows, mobile walls of sharp steel constantly attacking and fading.
Of course, everyone immediately thinks of wielding two swords (one in each hand), which is the classic definition of "florentine" fighting, but seeing this rule, I immediately thought of fighting sword and spear, or sword and axe, two classic Viking/Nordic/Norman/Anglo-Saxon fighting styles. With sword and spear, shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry (which commemorated the 1066 invasion of Anglo-Saxony by the Normans), you fight with a sword in your "on" hand (if you're right handed, right is your "on" hand) and a 6' or similar length spear in your "off" hand, the stabby bit pointed down. Holding your weapons in this way, you can stab at your opponent all the way at the end of your 6 feet and more of reach with the spear and use it up close as a very tall, thin shield, or choke up on it and stab at something closer to you. With sword and axe, you generally use a longer handled axe, generally 4' long, like a footman's axe or Danish bearded axe or even a shorter bardiche (use the stats for Battleaxe), and one with a butt spike on it. Like sword and spear, you fight sword and axe with sword in "on" and the axe in "off", using the beard or the scallop behind the bit in a bardiche as your handle, both to protect your "off" hand and to more easily punch with the axe blade. The butt spike you use like you would a spear, keeping your opponent at range. Both of the "off" weapons are versatile, and can be used two-handed without the sword.
The added bonus of using polearms, axes, and spears is that it is more realistic to use those weapons than swords. Yes, yes, when people think of armoured knights beating on each other, they think swords... but swords aren't really good against armour. Swords (both the iconic European longsword and Oriental katana, plus just about any other sword out there you can think of) were mostly used against unarmoured opponents, and everything else - spears which every civilization out there used because it's so easy to put a sharp point on a long stick, polearms which are all farming implements repurposed into medieval can openers, and axes got turned from chopping wood to chopping people - was what you used when you were facing someone with a decent amount of armour. Don't believe me? Check out any of the medieval arms manuals (Talhoffer is popular), or S.M. Stirling's fantastic Emberverse series of novels. If I were to rewrite the D&D rules, I'd focus more on spears - spears as the yardstick against which all other weapons are measured, spears doing more damage than swords (European longswords were used more as piercing weapons than slashing weapons back in the medieval period... why? because it was more effective that way), magical spears by the dozen, and replacing as much sword-bearing art with spear-bearing art as I can get away with. The iconic 5e fighter (seen below) is not bad, but still too much sword and not enough spear.
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| Click the image to learn more |
Enough of me prattling on, I'm sure you want to watch cool action videos of people in armour wailing on each other. So here goes, an example of sword and axe (he doesn't stab much with his butt spike because he's facing a leftie so the shield is already in place to block that particular shot):
And an example of sword and spear, featuring my good friend and former squire brother (he kills his opponent with a quick thrust of the spear, you can't see it because it's on the other side of the fight):
And the first of some fantastic instructional on fighting two swords or "florentine". Yes, these are old, low quality vids, but you can hear what he says and see well enough to tell what he's talking about.
The more I talked about "realism" in D&D combat, the more I wished they had added to the Shield Master feat a bonus attack with that item, as shields were as useful in the medieval period for bashing your enemies as they were for blocking sharp bits of metal intended to go into your body. Ah well, can't have them all.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
The Game You Game Master is For You As Well
I have seen from some other RPG gurus out there that I am being a "bad" game master for restricting my players to certain races and classes in my home brewed campaign world. Something about I'm keeping my players from enacting their fantasy desires, but I'm not buying it, not changing my house rules, and not feeling terribly bad about it. And neither should you. Remember, your enjoyment in the game world is just as important as your players' enjoyment, possibly even more so due to the game can run minus a player or two, but is a bit hard to happen without the game master. However, you can't drive off all of your players or there's not a game there, either, so if you are going to stomp on their dreams, do so in a limited fashion and have good reasons for what you are doing.
What? That's it, go home, nothing more to see here.
Fine, here are the restrictions for my D&D 5e game world and my reasons behind them, give you an idea of what I'm talking about. All of these are from the base books only, as anything beyond those books has to be brought to me first, and my players just aren't quite that deep into the game yet.
Classes - I don't allow the following classes:
-Barbarian. I don't have anything against Barbarians, but due to me fighting "murder hoboism" by making the PCs agents of the local government, Barbarians and their whole "all civilization is bad" vibe just doesn't fit. There are Barbarians out there, but for now, the PCs can't choose this type of character.
-Bard. Yep, I'm an old school role player and I hate bards. Show me your favorite Bard character, and I'll show you a PC that can work just as well as ANYTHING else, just with a proficiency in a musical instrument thrown in for flavor. We don't have Chef as a character class, nor Carpenter, nor any other menial task, so why do we have "singing prat"? I do have a player who insists that he could play a Bard so awesome that I would be forced to admit the error of my ways and allow Bards back in, but since I haven't killed his PC so he can bring forth "teh awsum", I haven't seen any proof yet.
-Monk. My game world, at least the part of it my players are in right now, is medieval European themed, not Oriental themed. And yes, the Monk is very much Oriental themed, don't fool yourself that they're not. "Oh," you say, "they had monks in medieval Europe that trained to fight." Yes, they did (we call them Clerics in D&D, btw), and they trained with weapons as well as their hands, because hitting someone who is wearing metal armor with your fists and feet is stupid. Similarly, my players can choose to be a Samurai archetype Fighter, but it has to be called something else (Knight of the Order of Garglefarg) and they don't use katanas. Why? Katanas are fantastic swords... as long as the bad guys aren't wearing any armor, otherwise they suck, and again, keep your Oriental fantasy out of my European fantasy.
-Sorcerer. There are Sorcerers in my game world, but that's because all the Sorcerers are Dragonborn (see below). I have been thinking to allow other Sorcerers to appear, but if/when they do, it'll be in a different part of the world than what the PCs are currently in.
-Warlock. This class has always bothered me, partly because it became really popular in 4th edition and is here in 5th due to nostalgia for that crowd (of which I never was a member of). Mostly for me though, is that the Warlock is inherently greedy - I needed help or I desired the esoteric knowledge or whatever, and something out there answered - and so Warlocks don't really need any other party members, except when their patron compels them to do something and they can't handle it on their own. Plus, the most interesting part of any Warlock character's story (the part where they gained their powers) happens outside of the normal game, in the player's mind, or just between the DM and the player, or even in a Session Zero with the rest of the party merely looking on. I am tempted to begin allowing Warlocks in my game world, but only as a multiclassing option, and only then when the party is on the verge of a TPK.
Races - I do not allow the following races to be PCs:
-Dragonborn. Here's another 4th edition nostalgia-fest that just grates on me. Why, why WotC, did you give us this race to play? The game itself is called Dungeons & DRAGONS for fuck's sake, why would you want to play anything other than a Dragonborn? It's way too fan-service-y of a race, so I made it important to the backstory of my world and while they exist in my game world, you can't play one. And to be honest, I would have far more been handed the half-dragon template from old 3rd edition, or be given half-dragon stats of the four base races from the outset.
-Gnome. Yet another race I've long had no liking of, Gnomes have never been well defined in the game, as depending on the edition you're playing they are described as even shorter Dwarves, tall Halflings, really short Elves, or a confusing mix of the above. Listen, in my game world, you get Dwarves and Halflings, and Elves are taller than Humans, and that's it, don't need another race that's too much like the others and confusing to everybody.
-Half-Elf/-Orc. Oh, good old John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, your estate sued the crap out of TSR for infringing on your work, and while Gygax and company claimed otherwise, these two races were the proof in that pudding. We don't have half-dwarves or half-gnomes or elf-dwarves or halfling-orcs in D&D, because JRR didn't have any of them in his works. I'm down with that, I've already kicked out one race for not having enough of an unique flavor (Gnomes) and wouldn't mind having every possible combination out there - and this is the important part - ONLY IF THEY HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE FLAVOR. Trying to not only balance all the benefits and detriments of these new races, but also coming up with something that feels different enough from the core races? Way too much work for too little outcome, so better to just slim down the choices to the iconic races from the beginning. Plus, every Half-Elf turns out to be Tanis Half-Elven from Dragonlance (I hate my parents, both humans and elves hate me, oh woe is me), and every Half-Orc seems to be the result of a horrible rape.
-Drow/Duergar. Not only am I such a bastard that I restrict classes and races to my players, I also have restricted the sub-races (Lightfoot Halflings, Hill Dwarves, and Wood Elves), at least if their PC is a native of the central empire that the story revolves around. It gives the empire a theme, and also gives me competing kingdoms of the other sub-races to use as a counter-point to the party. Drow and Duergar just fall into this category - if all of the players wanted to play as Drow or Duergar, I would allow it, but one Drizz't knock-off is too many, and I'm not allowing that.
The above races are all from the Player's Handbook and are considered core, but the following are all from Volo's Guide to Monsters and considered optional from the outset. I may let the players eventually play some of these, but for the most part, they'll have to earn the right by making it through this first overarching campaign I have them in, first.
-Aasimar/Tieflings. Yet again, 4th edition nostalgia fest. There are representatives of both of these half breeds in the game world, but the players can't play one, as even the ones that are extant are more focused on what their Celestial/Infernal forebears are doing than what is going on in the mortal realm.
-Firbolg. Do exist in the world, but like the Barbarian, very anti-civilization, so don't fit with the party real well.
-Goliath. Simply don't exist in the world. We have Firbolg, why did we need another playable mini-giant? Is this another 4th edition nostalgia-fest? Probably. Feh.
-Kenku. These are kind of neat, but with the description of the race as a whole, this is definitely for experienced players only. So for now, not player accessible.
-Lizardfolk. I also like to lump in with the Lizardfolk all the other nigh-Human monstrous races - Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and Goblins - and don't think that all of these are automatically evil in my game world, but until the situation is just right, the players are not going to play any of these. That right situation would either be the whole party playing as a monstrous race, or it could be a PC dies near a tribe of one of these races, and that PC's player decides they're playing a monster that joins in with the rest of the party as a replacement PC.
-Triton. I'm actually okay with these, but since we're playing land-locked adventures, these really don't make much sense. If we take the campaign to the high seas, these will definitely be allowed into the party.
Remember, if the world makes sense to you, stick to your guns and either the players will hate the restrictions too much and leave, or they'll learn to deal.
EDIT: I somehow missed Tabaxi, sorry about that. Anyway, Tabaxi also not currently allowed, not because I don't like them or think they're too advanced for the table, but because I wanted simple. I'd prefer not only to have Tabaxi (cat folk), Kenku (bird folk) and Thri-Kreen (insect folk), but also a dog folk and rat folk to keep the
What? That's it, go home, nothing more to see here.
Fine, here are the restrictions for my D&D 5e game world and my reasons behind them, give you an idea of what I'm talking about. All of these are from the base books only, as anything beyond those books has to be brought to me first, and my players just aren't quite that deep into the game yet.
Classes - I don't allow the following classes:
-Barbarian. I don't have anything against Barbarians, but due to me fighting "murder hoboism" by making the PCs agents of the local government, Barbarians and their whole "all civilization is bad" vibe just doesn't fit. There are Barbarians out there, but for now, the PCs can't choose this type of character.
-Bard. Yep, I'm an old school role player and I hate bards. Show me your favorite Bard character, and I'll show you a PC that can work just as well as ANYTHING else, just with a proficiency in a musical instrument thrown in for flavor. We don't have Chef as a character class, nor Carpenter, nor any other menial task, so why do we have "singing prat"? I do have a player who insists that he could play a Bard so awesome that I would be forced to admit the error of my ways and allow Bards back in, but since I haven't killed his PC so he can bring forth "teh awsum", I haven't seen any proof yet.
-Monk. My game world, at least the part of it my players are in right now, is medieval European themed, not Oriental themed. And yes, the Monk is very much Oriental themed, don't fool yourself that they're not. "Oh," you say, "they had monks in medieval Europe that trained to fight." Yes, they did (we call them Clerics in D&D, btw), and they trained with weapons as well as their hands, because hitting someone who is wearing metal armor with your fists and feet is stupid. Similarly, my players can choose to be a Samurai archetype Fighter, but it has to be called something else (Knight of the Order of Garglefarg) and they don't use katanas. Why? Katanas are fantastic swords... as long as the bad guys aren't wearing any armor, otherwise they suck, and again, keep your Oriental fantasy out of my European fantasy.
-Sorcerer. There are Sorcerers in my game world, but that's because all the Sorcerers are Dragonborn (see below). I have been thinking to allow other Sorcerers to appear, but if/when they do, it'll be in a different part of the world than what the PCs are currently in.
-Warlock. This class has always bothered me, partly because it became really popular in 4th edition and is here in 5th due to nostalgia for that crowd (of which I never was a member of). Mostly for me though, is that the Warlock is inherently greedy - I needed help or I desired the esoteric knowledge or whatever, and something out there answered - and so Warlocks don't really need any other party members, except when their patron compels them to do something and they can't handle it on their own. Plus, the most interesting part of any Warlock character's story (the part where they gained their powers) happens outside of the normal game, in the player's mind, or just between the DM and the player, or even in a Session Zero with the rest of the party merely looking on. I am tempted to begin allowing Warlocks in my game world, but only as a multiclassing option, and only then when the party is on the verge of a TPK.
Races - I do not allow the following races to be PCs:
-Dragonborn. Here's another 4th edition nostalgia-fest that just grates on me. Why, why WotC, did you give us this race to play? The game itself is called Dungeons & DRAGONS for fuck's sake, why would you want to play anything other than a Dragonborn? It's way too fan-service-y of a race, so I made it important to the backstory of my world and while they exist in my game world, you can't play one. And to be honest, I would have far more been handed the half-dragon template from old 3rd edition, or be given half-dragon stats of the four base races from the outset.
-Gnome. Yet another race I've long had no liking of, Gnomes have never been well defined in the game, as depending on the edition you're playing they are described as even shorter Dwarves, tall Halflings, really short Elves, or a confusing mix of the above. Listen, in my game world, you get Dwarves and Halflings, and Elves are taller than Humans, and that's it, don't need another race that's too much like the others and confusing to everybody.
-Half-Elf/-Orc. Oh, good old John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, your estate sued the crap out of TSR for infringing on your work, and while Gygax and company claimed otherwise, these two races were the proof in that pudding. We don't have half-dwarves or half-gnomes or elf-dwarves or halfling-orcs in D&D, because JRR didn't have any of them in his works. I'm down with that, I've already kicked out one race for not having enough of an unique flavor (Gnomes) and wouldn't mind having every possible combination out there - and this is the important part - ONLY IF THEY HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE FLAVOR. Trying to not only balance all the benefits and detriments of these new races, but also coming up with something that feels different enough from the core races? Way too much work for too little outcome, so better to just slim down the choices to the iconic races from the beginning. Plus, every Half-Elf turns out to be Tanis Half-Elven from Dragonlance (I hate my parents, both humans and elves hate me, oh woe is me), and every Half-Orc seems to be the result of a horrible rape.
-Drow/Duergar. Not only am I such a bastard that I restrict classes and races to my players, I also have restricted the sub-races (Lightfoot Halflings, Hill Dwarves, and Wood Elves), at least if their PC is a native of the central empire that the story revolves around. It gives the empire a theme, and also gives me competing kingdoms of the other sub-races to use as a counter-point to the party. Drow and Duergar just fall into this category - if all of the players wanted to play as Drow or Duergar, I would allow it, but one Drizz't knock-off is too many, and I'm not allowing that.
The above races are all from the Player's Handbook and are considered core, but the following are all from Volo's Guide to Monsters and considered optional from the outset. I may let the players eventually play some of these, but for the most part, they'll have to earn the right by making it through this first overarching campaign I have them in, first.
-Aasimar/Tieflings. Yet again, 4th edition nostalgia fest. There are representatives of both of these half breeds in the game world, but the players can't play one, as even the ones that are extant are more focused on what their Celestial/Infernal forebears are doing than what is going on in the mortal realm.
-Firbolg. Do exist in the world, but like the Barbarian, very anti-civilization, so don't fit with the party real well.
-Goliath. Simply don't exist in the world. We have Firbolg, why did we need another playable mini-giant? Is this another 4th edition nostalgia-fest? Probably. Feh.
-Kenku. These are kind of neat, but with the description of the race as a whole, this is definitely for experienced players only. So for now, not player accessible.
-Lizardfolk. I also like to lump in with the Lizardfolk all the other nigh-Human monstrous races - Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, and Goblins - and don't think that all of these are automatically evil in my game world, but until the situation is just right, the players are not going to play any of these. That right situation would either be the whole party playing as a monstrous race, or it could be a PC dies near a tribe of one of these races, and that PC's player decides they're playing a monster that joins in with the rest of the party as a replacement PC.
-Triton. I'm actually okay with these, but since we're playing land-locked adventures, these really don't make much sense. If we take the campaign to the high seas, these will definitely be allowed into the party.
Remember, if the world makes sense to you, stick to your guns and either the players will hate the restrictions too much and leave, or they'll learn to deal.
EDIT: I somehow missed Tabaxi, sorry about that. Anyway, Tabaxi also not currently allowed, not because I don't like them or think they're too advanced for the table, but because I wanted simple. I'd prefer not only to have Tabaxi (cat folk), Kenku (bird folk) and Thri-Kreen (insect folk), but also a dog folk and rat folk to keep the
Monday, September 17, 2018
5e Game - Part 12
Two sessions have occurred since last I typed about the game, but mostly a lot of RP'ing (that's role playing) happened between the two sessions, and only one big fight. The party spent the past two sessions finishing up the last campaign arc - I've got them lined up to go to level 20 for the overall campaign, so the first arc was levels 1 through 6 and involved the 3.5 adventure from WotC, The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde - and starting the next arc of the campaign (another 3.5 adventure from WotC, The Red Hand of Doom), so mostly talking to me as various NPCs and each other as they figured out what to do as reports of a coming horde of hobgoblins were invading the not-a-kingdom, loose alliance of independent townships immediately to the north of where the PCs were located.
With all of the RP'ing we've done the last two weekends, I'm reminded that my players are more "roll" players than they are "role" players. But, they muscled through it, talked to NPCs as their characters would (I want to, but won't, point out to my players that while it may be funny to make many "asshole" PCs, this practice is keeping the party from earning extra XP for getting good results from said conversations), they got the necessary information, and moved towards the next point in the story. Yes, I am not running a true sandbox, open world campaign, as I am trying to fight murder-hoboism by giving the party clear, government-desired goals (and running prepared adventures), and mostly succeeding.
The biggest issue we had was trying to introduce a new player into the party that didn't really want to play the game as much as they first professed. I'm all for new players, and understand when they're shy, unsure of themselves, as all but the most talented of us started out this way (if I told you I was the best player ever, right from the beginning, would you believe me? I have this large chunk of ocean-front property in Missouri I'd like to sell you...), but complete disinterest in the game, poor attitude towards the other players and me, the DM, and just generally not allowing themself to have any fun? There comes a point where you jut have to sit down with said new player and say "okay, this wasn't fun for you, it's not much fun for the rest of the party for you to be such a downer, maybe the game or the party just aren't for you" and seek out a replacement for them. It's never fun, and more than a bit disappointing because of the expectant joy you feel as a DM when you welcome someone new to the table and then that all just goes away, but it's unfortunately a part of the game. How do you fix that? Act the adult - talk to the player, in a calm and non-threatening manner, as this is not worthy of aggression. If someone just isn't interested in D&D, they haven't necessarily wasted your or the party's time, it just didn't work out with them. For lots of playing groups, sometimes even one play session is one session too many.
It was not all bad, the one combat we held between the two sessions was rather big (two waves of 7 hobgoblins apiece, 2 hell hounds, a hobgoblin captain and a hobgoblin devastator) due to it being the only planned encounter between two long rest periods. The encounter was hard, the players were sweating a little, but overcame the bad guys in the end without any of them dropping to zero HP.
There was an accusation of "murder hoboism" in the after game review - yes, I am a former Army Sergeant, after every game I ask my players if they had fun, and what needs to be improved and what needs to continue happening in the games, it's an unbreakable habit - but from a game several months past, where the party's paladin started to let a wererat (who had just witnessed his buddy get toasted and had NO interest whatsoever in fighting) get away and then proceeded to guide the druid as a dire wolf to hunt down said wererat and kill it. The player who accused the paladin of murder-hoboism may think that's exactly what he saw, but I need to sit down with him and explain that it's not - it's completely different to start to allow an enemy escape and then kill him/it/her, and what murder-hoboism is. Did it violate the paladin's alignment? Well, because the paladin's alignment is Chaotic Good (paladins in 5e don't have to be Lawful Good, they just can't violate their Sacred Oath) and he took the Oath of Vengeance, no, not even a little bit. The problem isn't murder-hoboism or even the paladin breaking their alignment/oath, but the player (the accusatory one) didn't like it, and instead of playing it out through his PC at the paladin PC, he held it in and brought it out of the game, player to player.
With all of the RP'ing we've done the last two weekends, I'm reminded that my players are more "roll" players than they are "role" players. But, they muscled through it, talked to NPCs as their characters would (I want to, but won't, point out to my players that while it may be funny to make many "asshole" PCs, this practice is keeping the party from earning extra XP for getting good results from said conversations), they got the necessary information, and moved towards the next point in the story. Yes, I am not running a true sandbox, open world campaign, as I am trying to fight murder-hoboism by giving the party clear, government-desired goals (and running prepared adventures), and mostly succeeding.
The biggest issue we had was trying to introduce a new player into the party that didn't really want to play the game as much as they first professed. I'm all for new players, and understand when they're shy, unsure of themselves, as all but the most talented of us started out this way (if I told you I was the best player ever, right from the beginning, would you believe me? I have this large chunk of ocean-front property in Missouri I'd like to sell you...), but complete disinterest in the game, poor attitude towards the other players and me, the DM, and just generally not allowing themself to have any fun? There comes a point where you jut have to sit down with said new player and say "okay, this wasn't fun for you, it's not much fun for the rest of the party for you to be such a downer, maybe the game or the party just aren't for you" and seek out a replacement for them. It's never fun, and more than a bit disappointing because of the expectant joy you feel as a DM when you welcome someone new to the table and then that all just goes away, but it's unfortunately a part of the game. How do you fix that? Act the adult - talk to the player, in a calm and non-threatening manner, as this is not worthy of aggression. If someone just isn't interested in D&D, they haven't necessarily wasted your or the party's time, it just didn't work out with them. For lots of playing groups, sometimes even one play session is one session too many.
It was not all bad, the one combat we held between the two sessions was rather big (two waves of 7 hobgoblins apiece, 2 hell hounds, a hobgoblin captain and a hobgoblin devastator) due to it being the only planned encounter between two long rest periods. The encounter was hard, the players were sweating a little, but overcame the bad guys in the end without any of them dropping to zero HP.
There was an accusation of "murder hoboism" in the after game review - yes, I am a former Army Sergeant, after every game I ask my players if they had fun, and what needs to be improved and what needs to continue happening in the games, it's an unbreakable habit - but from a game several months past, where the party's paladin started to let a wererat (who had just witnessed his buddy get toasted and had NO interest whatsoever in fighting) get away and then proceeded to guide the druid as a dire wolf to hunt down said wererat and kill it. The player who accused the paladin of murder-hoboism may think that's exactly what he saw, but I need to sit down with him and explain that it's not - it's completely different to start to allow an enemy escape and then kill him/it/her, and what murder-hoboism is. Did it violate the paladin's alignment? Well, because the paladin's alignment is Chaotic Good (paladins in 5e don't have to be Lawful Good, they just can't violate their Sacred Oath) and he took the Oath of Vengeance, no, not even a little bit. The problem isn't murder-hoboism or even the paladin breaking their alignment/oath, but the player (the accusatory one) didn't like it, and instead of playing it out through his PC at the paladin PC, he held it in and brought it out of the game, player to player.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
The Adult Questions
How adult is your game world? PG? PG-13? R? X?
Before you get too worked up about this, hear me out. However "adult" you want your game world to be, as long as it is enough for you and your gamers, you are correct and doing it right. I'm just here to pose questions, discuss some options, and you can pay as much or as little to this as you wish.
Does your gameworld contain rape, slavery, homosexuality, bastard children, cannibalism, adultery, prostitution, and poly-marriages? How about abortion, orphans/adoption, child abandonment, transgenderism, spousal abuse, rape ("you said rape twice" "I like rape"... which used to be a funny joke in an even funnier movie, but now just brings screams of misogyny and trigger words), alcoholism, and drug abuse/addiction/trafficking? How do people in your world deal with birth, child rearing, marriage, divorce, and death?
I know, I know, I call all this "adult" but what we're really talking about is how real your fantasy world is. At its base, D&D and the like are fairly unreal, high fantasy - most of what I asked about above are rarely touched upon, if ever, and the game is kept rather mild... once you discount all the murdering, foul language, stealing, and physical/mental assaults that happen in a normal adventure. Opposite that, in the real world, today and more so in our past, we know that all of the above existed, and depending on the place and time period, were considered the norm. So how adult is your game world? Do you let your morality or the morality of your players influence what goes into your game world?
Of course you do, we all do. If we didn't, the games we play would be too uncomfortable to be fun. But a little discomfort, a little squeamishness, a little bit of nervous laughter around the table, it can make your game more interesting, more exciting. Notice I used the word "can" and "little", as you as a game master have to figure out what "little" means for your group (and it's different for every potential "adult" theme) and when "little" turns suddenly into "way too much". And sometimes "any" turns "can be fun" into "no fun at all".
What should you include in your game world? As I said, your average RPG, modern, futuristic, or medieval in setting, already contains murder, robbery, phsyical/mental assault, and for most groups, foul language. Beyond those, it's up to you and the makeup of your group. What could send one group spiraling into outright anger and hate could be seen by another group as everyday, same old same old. That's why I included homosexuality and poly-marriages in my list above, not that I believe those who practice either are inherently evil, but as it wasn't all that long ago that homosexuality was not only viewed as morally wrong but was outright illegal in many parts of America, and poly-marriages, while becoming more acceptable in mainstream America, is still not legal. You have to gauge the feelings of your players (not their characters, but the players themselves), and avoid venerating any of the above with groups that find that subject or act utterly abhorrent. No matter what you purport your PCs to espouse or embrace, if they do something you the player or game master find utterly taboo, you will not like yourself at the end of the day. Definitely avoid any subject that your players have experienced in real life, for instance, someone who is a victim of child abuse is probably not going to have fun at the table if you include child abuse in your game world... or might enjoy it too much by getting vengeance on anyone they see performing it, and derailing the game for everyone else in pursuing their new quest.
I am not going to rant at you about my own views of everything I have listed above, but let me pose these questions to you to help you define for yourself what any of the above topics mean to you.
- Why does this make you uncomfortable or why do you see it as taboo? Is the reason you find it distasteful tied to the fact that it was taught to you as part of a religion (whether you still follow that religion or not)?
- Are there any situations where this would be acceptable to you in real life?
- Are there any of the above that used to be taboo in your real life but are now fully acceptable? How about the opposite?
Please note that all of the above may already exist in your game world, but when you "include" any of these, you are bringing that idea or act to the attention of your players. Your game world may be ultra realistic, X-rated already, but what you are showing your players is only the PG level stuff. Any of these that you decide could spice up your game world also requires you find a moral justification for the NPCs in your world to not also find it immediately abhorrent.
Before you get too worked up about this, hear me out. However "adult" you want your game world to be, as long as it is enough for you and your gamers, you are correct and doing it right. I'm just here to pose questions, discuss some options, and you can pay as much or as little to this as you wish.
Does your gameworld contain rape, slavery, homosexuality, bastard children, cannibalism, adultery, prostitution, and poly-marriages? How about abortion, orphans/adoption, child abandonment, transgenderism, spousal abuse, rape ("you said rape twice" "I like rape"... which used to be a funny joke in an even funnier movie, but now just brings screams of misogyny and trigger words), alcoholism, and drug abuse/addiction/trafficking? How do people in your world deal with birth, child rearing, marriage, divorce, and death?
I know, I know, I call all this "adult" but what we're really talking about is how real your fantasy world is. At its base, D&D and the like are fairly unreal, high fantasy - most of what I asked about above are rarely touched upon, if ever, and the game is kept rather mild... once you discount all the murdering, foul language, stealing, and physical/mental assaults that happen in a normal adventure. Opposite that, in the real world, today and more so in our past, we know that all of the above existed, and depending on the place and time period, were considered the norm. So how adult is your game world? Do you let your morality or the morality of your players influence what goes into your game world?
Of course you do, we all do. If we didn't, the games we play would be too uncomfortable to be fun. But a little discomfort, a little squeamishness, a little bit of nervous laughter around the table, it can make your game more interesting, more exciting. Notice I used the word "can" and "little", as you as a game master have to figure out what "little" means for your group (and it's different for every potential "adult" theme) and when "little" turns suddenly into "way too much". And sometimes "any" turns "can be fun" into "no fun at all".
What should you include in your game world? As I said, your average RPG, modern, futuristic, or medieval in setting, already contains murder, robbery, phsyical/mental assault, and for most groups, foul language. Beyond those, it's up to you and the makeup of your group. What could send one group spiraling into outright anger and hate could be seen by another group as everyday, same old same old. That's why I included homosexuality and poly-marriages in my list above, not that I believe those who practice either are inherently evil, but as it wasn't all that long ago that homosexuality was not only viewed as morally wrong but was outright illegal in many parts of America, and poly-marriages, while becoming more acceptable in mainstream America, is still not legal. You have to gauge the feelings of your players (not their characters, but the players themselves), and avoid venerating any of the above with groups that find that subject or act utterly abhorrent. No matter what you purport your PCs to espouse or embrace, if they do something you the player or game master find utterly taboo, you will not like yourself at the end of the day. Definitely avoid any subject that your players have experienced in real life, for instance, someone who is a victim of child abuse is probably not going to have fun at the table if you include child abuse in your game world... or might enjoy it too much by getting vengeance on anyone they see performing it, and derailing the game for everyone else in pursuing their new quest.
I am not going to rant at you about my own views of everything I have listed above, but let me pose these questions to you to help you define for yourself what any of the above topics mean to you.
- Why does this make you uncomfortable or why do you see it as taboo? Is the reason you find it distasteful tied to the fact that it was taught to you as part of a religion (whether you still follow that religion or not)?
- Are there any situations where this would be acceptable to you in real life?
- Are there any of the above that used to be taboo in your real life but are now fully acceptable? How about the opposite?
Please note that all of the above may already exist in your game world, but when you "include" any of these, you are bringing that idea or act to the attention of your players. Your game world may be ultra realistic, X-rated already, but what you are showing your players is only the PG level stuff. Any of these that you decide could spice up your game world also requires you find a moral justification for the NPCs in your world to not also find it immediately abhorrent.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Politics at the Table
I ran across a video on YouTube that took huge offense at some paragraphs of text in Paizo's Pathfinder v2 Playtest. Yes, I am linking you to the playtest files because I think you should check it out, but am not linking the video, because the politics of the gentleman who made it are as far right as what I'm about to talk about is far left. Again, yes, your political leanings are your problem not mine, but while I can ignore Paizo's politics and play their game however I damn well please (trust me, the Paizo Polizei are never going to show up at my house and tell me I'm doing it wrong), I can't stand to listen to your video without having to put up with your politics.
Now, I am going to talk about my politics by pasting said text from the Pathfinder v2 Playtest, pages 5 and 6 for those interested, and if you don't want to hear my politics, that's fine. Please watch this video (which I find appropriate to the situation) instead and then leave without commenting.
Great, on with the show. The words from the playtest will be in BOLD, and my comments will be normal. TL,DR: I may be an asshole, but there is such a thing as going too far, and a gaming company preaching at me in their rulebook falls firmly into "beyond the pale" territory.
Inherent social contract? Do we get to see this contract before we sign it? Nope, guess not.
everyone has gathered to have fun together, and the table is a safe space for everyone.
Safe space? Oh yeah, that's just another phrase to let those far left snowflakes think they're actually safe, when real life isn't safe, for your person, your ideas and thoughts, and definitely not for anyone's motivations towards or away from you. Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Everyone has a right to play and enjoy Pathfinder regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences.
They may have the right (at least in the US of A), but you can't actually force any GM to open up their game to "anyone". I don't care about any of the above (my own personal beliefs? if you can accomplish the mission, I don't care about your age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation), but as a DM myself, especially one who games in my own home, if I don't like you for any reason, you can go find another game.
Pathfinder is for everyone, and Pathfinder games should be as safe, inclusive, and fun as possible for all.
Yes, RPGs should be fun for all, why are you trying to remind us of this? Oh wait, you have been called out by a former employee for not being "gender progressive" enough, and even though you were plenty "gender progressive" before now (and she was just a raging bitch who is unpleasant to be around by both genders and anyone of any color), you now feel guilty that maybe you weren't taking it far enough. Trust me, you were taking it too far before this, and this little screed in your RPG product makes me respect you a little less.
The players' responsibility? Was this included in that inherent social contract we didn't get to read before you held a gun to our collective skulls and insisted that we had definitely signed it? Players, listen to me! You can be as big a racist, bigoted asshole as you want to be, and Paizo can't do anything about it! Your game master (me included) has the right to boot you out of their game if you are said racist, bigoted asshole, but you also have every right to go find a game that acting like that is acceptable. Oh, and constantly reminding all of us that there are "members of minority or marginalized communities", isn't that just enforcing the racial/gender stereotypes further? Seriously, the more you try to coddle people in this manner, the worse you are actually serving their needs.
Thus, it’s important to consider your character concepts and roleplaying style and avoid any approach that could cause harm to another player. A character whose concept and mannerisms are racist tropes, for example, is exceptionally harmful and works against the goal of providing fun for all.
Wait, what? I could swear we were all portraying made up people, possibly not even human, who all exist on worlds that exist only in our imaginations. Is this really a problem for any gaming group out there? And cause harm to another player? Yes, you should not punch your fellow gamers. What happened to "sticks and stones..."? The world sucks folks, and we ain't guaranteed anything in this life except we will all die at some point - grow up and realize you cannot be insulated from everything.
A roleplaying style in which a player or character is constantly interrupting others or treating certain players or characters with condescension is similarly unacceptable.
That player is just a bad player and not a good person. You don't have to hide behind the "he/she/it is a racist!" accusation, just tell them they suck as a player and to kindly leave the group. You're diluting the message by beating us over the head with it!
Furthermore, standards of respect don’t vanish simply because you’re playing a character in a fantasy game. For example, it’s never acceptable to refer to another person using an offensive term or a slur, and doing so “in character” is just as bad as doing so directly.
Yes, you can, this is fiction. You can play your character however you want it. Again, the Paizo Polizei are not breaking down your door just because you're playing an asshole who turns to the nymph and says "slut". Why don't you spend this time teaching GMs how to make dungeons, adventures, and campaigns, and less time preaching at us like we were naughty children on things you have no control over?
If your character’s concept requires you act this way, that’s a good sign your concept is harmful, and you have a responsibility to change it.
Again, Paizo flings around "responsibility" just as freely as they can, when the reality couldn't be further from this - if you honestly don't like my character, one of us is leaving the group, but no one is changing their character just because you claim to be offended by it. I think I've realized something about this rant in their gaming product - if they keep telling you it's your responsibility, you might actually believe them and not hold try to sue them. Yes, I know, it's also not Paizo's responsibility how ANYONE plays their game, but you know we are a sue happy bunch in the States, and I wouldn't put it past one of you chuckleheads to try to take them to court.
Sometimes, you might not realize that your character concept or roleplaying style is making others feel unwelcome at the gaming table. If another player tells you that your character concept or roleplaying style makes them uncomfortable, you shouldn’t argue about what they should or shouldn’t find offensive or say that what you’re doing is common (and therefore okay) among players or in other media. Instead, you should simply stop and make sure the game is a fun experience for everyone. After all, that’s what gaming is about!
Yes, be an adult, tell someone if it offends you, and if they won't change, walk away and find another game. We don't need to be preached at by an RPG rulebook to know this stuff! Especially for a game where the win state is as simple as "did we have fun? yes!", let me tell you, just reading the past 3 paragraphs in your rulebook have made this "not fun" for me.
Again, haven't seen, read, or signed this social contract, how can I hold my players accountable to it when they are in the same boat? And if you're gaming in a public space, there is nothing keeping anyone from walking away from your game at any time - that's otherwise known as "kidnapping", an actual threat and harmful situation, not something that merely vibrated the air a little before it struck your ears.
Be on the lookout for behavior that’s inappropriate, whether intentional or inadvertent, and pay careful attention to players’ body language during gameplay. If you notice a player becoming uncomfortable, you are empowered to pause the game, take it in a new direction, privately check in with your players during or after the session, or take any other action you think is appropriate to move the game toward a fun experience for everyone.
Oh good, I now have your permission to do whatever I want in my game? What about everything else in this little rant that you've told me I'm not allowed to do, I can do everything but that, right? And you just had to use "empowered"... I just won at snowflake bingo, thank you.
That said, you should never let players who are uncomfortable with different identities or experiences derail your game. People of all identities and experiences have a right to be represented in the game, even if they’re not necessarily playing at your table.
I'm uncomfortable with this rant. And it doesn't matter if anyone finds your "right think" uncomfortable, just so long as they don't have any "wrong think" themselves.
Otherwise, if a player tells you they’re uncomfortable with something in the game, whether it’s content you’ve presented as the GM or another player’s actions, listen to them and take steps to ensure they can once again have fun during your game.
If they're uncomfortable with my game, especially the content that I've created, that player can go find another game, and there's nothing legally you can do about it. However, I do appreciate a player that enjoys the game enough to feel offended by something I've done, and who also acts adult enough to talk to me about it.
If you’re preparing written material and you find the description of a character or a situation to be inappropriate, you are fully empowered to change any details as you see fit to best suit your players.
Again with "empowered". Now hear this - Game Masters have always had the right to change anyone else's material and run it as they see fit. We don't need your permission now, as we've never needed your permission before.
Making sure the game is fun for everyone is your biggest job!
Just so long as "right think" is your definition of fun.
Okay, if you've lasted this long, good on you. And let me assure you, I'm not a racist, bigoted asshole, I'm merely an asshole. I used to be the EO Coordinator for several units in the Army National Guard, and I fully believe in the Army's EO message out here in real life now that I'm out of the Army - as long as you can accomplish the mission, it does not matter your gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion. That doesn't mean I want to get preached at by the accessories for my RPG. Except for my wife, my personal game is filled with straight white males... not because I dislike minorities or homosexuals or even women, but because that's everyone who answered the call when I said, "hey, I'm gonna run a D&D 5e game, who wants in?"
Seriously folks, you've become too sensitive and you need to toughen up a bit. Should you just close your mouth and take other people's racism? No, do not "go quietly" but don't be so thin skinned that this kind of thing is required in your "make believe happy fun time" game. I think Patton Oswalt describes it rather well in his Talking for Clapping comedy special (still available on Netflix, which I know all you have a subscription to), go watch it. About 22 minutes in he has a great rant on letting evil people in with using your "right think" words against you.
Now, I am going to talk about my politics by pasting said text from the Pathfinder v2 Playtest, pages 5 and 6 for those interested, and if you don't want to hear my politics, that's fine. Please watch this video (which I find appropriate to the situation) instead and then leave without commenting.
Great, on with the show. The words from the playtest will be in BOLD, and my comments will be normal. TL,DR: I may be an asshole, but there is such a thing as going too far, and a gaming company preaching at me in their rulebook falls firmly into "beyond the pale" territory.
Gaming Is for All
Whether you’re a player or a Game Master, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game involves an inherent social contract:Inherent social contract? Do we get to see this contract before we sign it? Nope, guess not.
everyone has gathered to have fun together, and the table is a safe space for everyone.
Safe space? Oh yeah, that's just another phrase to let those far left snowflakes think they're actually safe, when real life isn't safe, for your person, your ideas and thoughts, and definitely not for anyone's motivations towards or away from you. Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Everyone has a right to play and enjoy Pathfinder regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences.
They may have the right (at least in the US of A), but you can't actually force any GM to open up their game to "anyone". I don't care about any of the above (my own personal beliefs? if you can accomplish the mission, I don't care about your age, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation), but as a DM myself, especially one who games in my own home, if I don't like you for any reason, you can go find another game.
Pathfinder is for everyone, and Pathfinder games should be as safe, inclusive, and fun as possible for all.
Yes, RPGs should be fun for all, why are you trying to remind us of this? Oh wait, you have been called out by a former employee for not being "gender progressive" enough, and even though you were plenty "gender progressive" before now (and she was just a raging bitch who is unpleasant to be around by both genders and anyone of any color), you now feel guilty that maybe you weren't taking it far enough. Trust me, you were taking it too far before this, and this little screed in your RPG product makes me respect you a little less.
Players
As a player, it is your responsibility to ensure that you are not creating or contributing to an environment that makes any other players feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, particularly if those players are members of minority or marginalized communities that haven’t always been welcome or represented in the larger gaming population.The players' responsibility? Was this included in that inherent social contract we didn't get to read before you held a gun to our collective skulls and insisted that we had definitely signed it? Players, listen to me! You can be as big a racist, bigoted asshole as you want to be, and Paizo can't do anything about it! Your game master (me included) has the right to boot you out of their game if you are said racist, bigoted asshole, but you also have every right to go find a game that acting like that is acceptable. Oh, and constantly reminding all of us that there are "members of minority or marginalized communities", isn't that just enforcing the racial/gender stereotypes further? Seriously, the more you try to coddle people in this manner, the worse you are actually serving their needs.
Thus, it’s important to consider your character concepts and roleplaying style and avoid any approach that could cause harm to another player. A character whose concept and mannerisms are racist tropes, for example, is exceptionally harmful and works against the goal of providing fun for all.
Wait, what? I could swear we were all portraying made up people, possibly not even human, who all exist on worlds that exist only in our imaginations. Is this really a problem for any gaming group out there? And cause harm to another player? Yes, you should not punch your fellow gamers. What happened to "sticks and stones..."? The world sucks folks, and we ain't guaranteed anything in this life except we will all die at some point - grow up and realize you cannot be insulated from everything.
A roleplaying style in which a player or character is constantly interrupting others or treating certain players or characters with condescension is similarly unacceptable.
That player is just a bad player and not a good person. You don't have to hide behind the "he/she/it is a racist!" accusation, just tell them they suck as a player and to kindly leave the group. You're diluting the message by beating us over the head with it!
Furthermore, standards of respect don’t vanish simply because you’re playing a character in a fantasy game. For example, it’s never acceptable to refer to another person using an offensive term or a slur, and doing so “in character” is just as bad as doing so directly.
Yes, you can, this is fiction. You can play your character however you want it. Again, the Paizo Polizei are not breaking down your door just because you're playing an asshole who turns to the nymph and says "slut". Why don't you spend this time teaching GMs how to make dungeons, adventures, and campaigns, and less time preaching at us like we were naughty children on things you have no control over?
If your character’s concept requires you act this way, that’s a good sign your concept is harmful, and you have a responsibility to change it.
Again, Paizo flings around "responsibility" just as freely as they can, when the reality couldn't be further from this - if you honestly don't like my character, one of us is leaving the group, but no one is changing their character just because you claim to be offended by it. I think I've realized something about this rant in their gaming product - if they keep telling you it's your responsibility, you might actually believe them and not hold try to sue them. Yes, I know, it's also not Paizo's responsibility how ANYONE plays their game, but you know we are a sue happy bunch in the States, and I wouldn't put it past one of you chuckleheads to try to take them to court.
Sometimes, you might not realize that your character concept or roleplaying style is making others feel unwelcome at the gaming table. If another player tells you that your character concept or roleplaying style makes them uncomfortable, you shouldn’t argue about what they should or shouldn’t find offensive or say that what you’re doing is common (and therefore okay) among players or in other media. Instead, you should simply stop and make sure the game is a fun experience for everyone. After all, that’s what gaming is about!
Yes, be an adult, tell someone if it offends you, and if they won't change, walk away and find another game. We don't need to be preached at by an RPG rulebook to know this stuff! Especially for a game where the win state is as simple as "did we have fun? yes!", let me tell you, just reading the past 3 paragraphs in your rulebook have made this "not fun" for me.
Game Masters
The role of Game Master comes with the responsibility of ensuring that none of your players violate the game’s social contract, especially when playing in a public space.Again, haven't seen, read, or signed this social contract, how can I hold my players accountable to it when they are in the same boat? And if you're gaming in a public space, there is nothing keeping anyone from walking away from your game at any time - that's otherwise known as "kidnapping", an actual threat and harmful situation, not something that merely vibrated the air a little before it struck your ears.
Be on the lookout for behavior that’s inappropriate, whether intentional or inadvertent, and pay careful attention to players’ body language during gameplay. If you notice a player becoming uncomfortable, you are empowered to pause the game, take it in a new direction, privately check in with your players during or after the session, or take any other action you think is appropriate to move the game toward a fun experience for everyone.
Oh good, I now have your permission to do whatever I want in my game? What about everything else in this little rant that you've told me I'm not allowed to do, I can do everything but that, right? And you just had to use "empowered"... I just won at snowflake bingo, thank you.
That said, you should never let players who are uncomfortable with different identities or experiences derail your game. People of all identities and experiences have a right to be represented in the game, even if they’re not necessarily playing at your table.
I'm uncomfortable with this rant. And it doesn't matter if anyone finds your "right think" uncomfortable, just so long as they don't have any "wrong think" themselves.
Otherwise, if a player tells you they’re uncomfortable with something in the game, whether it’s content you’ve presented as the GM or another player’s actions, listen to them and take steps to ensure they can once again have fun during your game.
If they're uncomfortable with my game, especially the content that I've created, that player can go find another game, and there's nothing legally you can do about it. However, I do appreciate a player that enjoys the game enough to feel offended by something I've done, and who also acts adult enough to talk to me about it.
If you’re preparing written material and you find the description of a character or a situation to be inappropriate, you are fully empowered to change any details as you see fit to best suit your players.
Again with "empowered". Now hear this - Game Masters have always had the right to change anyone else's material and run it as they see fit. We don't need your permission now, as we've never needed your permission before.
Making sure the game is fun for everyone is your biggest job!
Just so long as "right think" is your definition of fun.
Okay, if you've lasted this long, good on you. And let me assure you, I'm not a racist, bigoted asshole, I'm merely an asshole. I used to be the EO Coordinator for several units in the Army National Guard, and I fully believe in the Army's EO message out here in real life now that I'm out of the Army - as long as you can accomplish the mission, it does not matter your gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion. That doesn't mean I want to get preached at by the accessories for my RPG. Except for my wife, my personal game is filled with straight white males... not because I dislike minorities or homosexuals or even women, but because that's everyone who answered the call when I said, "hey, I'm gonna run a D&D 5e game, who wants in?"
Seriously folks, you've become too sensitive and you need to toughen up a bit. Should you just close your mouth and take other people's racism? No, do not "go quietly" but don't be so thin skinned that this kind of thing is required in your "make believe happy fun time" game. I think Patton Oswalt describes it rather well in his Talking for Clapping comedy special (still available on Netflix, which I know all you have a subscription to), go watch it. About 22 minutes in he has a great rant on letting evil people in with using your "right think" words against you.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Writing Plots by Two Dans
RPGs are about telling a story - the DM/GM/what have you sets out the plot, and the players make the PCs (literally the characters inside the story) respond to it. Now, not every game you run or play in needs to be as complicated and involved as War and Peace, your story can be as simple as "the orcs want to kill everyone and you have to stop them." It works, it's simple, but the same ol', same ol' gets boring after a while. So after doing the simple for a bit, maybe you want to tell bigger, more complicated stories. Stories like you see in movies or TV series, or read in books. How do the professionals who make those things come up with the stories? Well, imagination, which you're going to have to come up with on your own, but at least you can use the structures they use to make it easier for yourself.
Before I really get into this, let me point you at some articles by The Angry GM wherein he talked about narrative structure. You should read them as well, they're very informative. They can be found here, here, and over here.
For those of you who read through all of that, welcome back! For those of you who didn't, you're missing out, but I do have to admit Mr Angry is a wordy fellow, far worse than I am.
I have two resources that I use when creating a dungeon, or adventure, or campaign. Yeah, you could probably craft an encounter based on these story structures, but really, you want to keep the encounter brief and to the point - here is the goal, here is what is opposing the PCs, and here are the gains from succeeding and the punishments for failure. Even dungeons need to be very large for you to start worrying about using these structures in their creation, as usually you get only parts of these in your average size dungeon. But it's your world (assuming you are the game master), do what you will with it.
The first is a popular one with Hollywood script writers, the 7-Point Story Structure. Here is the author Dan Wells, who likes using it in his books, teaching it to a class:
The second is by none other than Mr Dan Harmon, of Rick & Morty and Harmonquest fame, a structure he calls the Story Circle. Read about it here, and watch a video about it here:
See? As long as the end product is good (in the case of RPGs, read "good" as "fun for the party and the game master"), it doesn't matter how you got there. All of the above are just tools to help you out when you need them, and even when you use them, you can turn things around by modifying those tools when you need to.
Before I really get into this, let me point you at some articles by The Angry GM wherein he talked about narrative structure. You should read them as well, they're very informative. They can be found here, here, and over here.
For those of you who read through all of that, welcome back! For those of you who didn't, you're missing out, but I do have to admit Mr Angry is a wordy fellow, far worse than I am.
I have two resources that I use when creating a dungeon, or adventure, or campaign. Yeah, you could probably craft an encounter based on these story structures, but really, you want to keep the encounter brief and to the point - here is the goal, here is what is opposing the PCs, and here are the gains from succeeding and the punishments for failure. Even dungeons need to be very large for you to start worrying about using these structures in their creation, as usually you get only parts of these in your average size dungeon. But it's your world (assuming you are the game master), do what you will with it.
The first is a popular one with Hollywood script writers, the 7-Point Story Structure. Here is the author Dan Wells, who likes using it in his books, teaching it to a class:
The second is by none other than Mr Dan Harmon, of Rick & Morty and Harmonquest fame, a structure he calls the Story Circle. Read about it here, and watch a video about it here:
But even after all of that, do you HAVE to follow these structures, either the two I've provided or any that Mr Angry talked about? Of course not. Here's Dan Harmon breaking his own Story Circle in an episode of Rick & Morty, and still coming out with a good story:
Saturday, September 8, 2018
Pathfinder Doesn't Get a Break... Exactly
Last post I stated that Wizards of the Coast should make a better guide to fledgling Dungeon Masters and teach them (us, really) in a better manner how to create encounters, dungeons, adventures, and campaigns. Pathfinder from Paizo Publishing, easily the biggest competitor to D&D in the realm of medieval fantasy tabletop RPGs and possibly the 2nd largest RPG period, also does not teach its Game Masters (Pathfinder has Game Masters, because Dungeon Masters is a copyrighted, trademarked, proprietary term exclusive to D&D, but a GM is the same as a DM) any of the above in a satisfactory manner. I can't really think of ANY RPG that does this satisfactorily (excluding the aforementioned 1983 D&D Basic Red Box set), but that could just be my lack of experience. I cannot, however much I may want to do it, play every RPG out there, so I may very well be wrong. I do however know from first hand experience that Pathfinder is just as lacking as D&D is in this area. But as you may (or may not) know, Paizo is gearing up to release a new version of Pathfinder, which gives them the perfect opportunity to rectify this neglect. More on that in a moment.
Paizo - and pretty much every other RPG publisher out there that's not WotC - tends to get a pass on this complaint, because they tend to get experienced gamers, not first timers. Most first timers tend to pick up D&D first, no matter what other genre of RPG they intend to play, that's just what gamers tend to do. By the time gamers go for other RPGs, they've generally spent enough time with D&D not to need the hand holding I think they should provide. And for most of the RPGs out there, they are way too small to be expending resources on producing instruction manuals for their games, but Paizo and Pathfinder are big enough that they can afford to do it. I think they should, because that has been their selling point from the beginning - doing D&D bigger and better than D&D is. Pathfinder is starting to get a lot of first time gamers these days, so I think they need to step up their game.
After typing up the last post about Frank Mentzer's 1983 teaching tool, I started pondering about that piece, and I think that while it was good, it still didn't go as far as it should have. Yes, it was a fantastic bit of instruction on how to make a dungeon, and as part of that, an encounter. Yet there is still more to be taught. D&D (and many RPGs, in broad, general strokes) is at its base a series of encounters - a fight with monsters, a negotiation with a magistrate, an investigation of a dark, dank place, a chat with a local innkeep - and you combine all types of encounters to make a dungeon. Yes, not all dungeons take place underground, but since dungeon (or at least the base word for dungeon, the Old French word donjon) doesn't mean what you think it does, I'm going to use dungeon here to mean a collection of encounters, whether they're in a cave, in a forest, under the noon day sun, in the darkest night, or whatever. Next up the chain is adventure (I've also called it a campaign arc before, either one works), and an adventure is just a series of dungeons, or can even be just one big dungeon. Finally, campaigns are collections of adventures and/or single dungeons, trying to get the PCs to the end of one final storyline all the way from bumbling, monster-killing neophytes where they started out.
Mr Mentzer's 1983 work handles dungeons well, and as an unintended consequence, eludes to how one should create encounters. I now think that, while this was ground breaking and sadly forgotten, it did not go far enough and that any work in the future that attempts to emulate it should provide instruction at all levels of the chain: encounter, dungeon, adventure, and campaign. I am by far not the first to talk about any or all of these together, but I'd really like to see the big boys tackle their basic training documents for their DMs (or GMs, or Storytellers, or Referees, or whatever they call them) in this manner.
Paizo - and pretty much every other RPG publisher out there that's not WotC - tends to get a pass on this complaint, because they tend to get experienced gamers, not first timers. Most first timers tend to pick up D&D first, no matter what other genre of RPG they intend to play, that's just what gamers tend to do. By the time gamers go for other RPGs, they've generally spent enough time with D&D not to need the hand holding I think they should provide. And for most of the RPGs out there, they are way too small to be expending resources on producing instruction manuals for their games, but Paizo and Pathfinder are big enough that they can afford to do it. I think they should, because that has been their selling point from the beginning - doing D&D bigger and better than D&D is. Pathfinder is starting to get a lot of first time gamers these days, so I think they need to step up their game.
After typing up the last post about Frank Mentzer's 1983 teaching tool, I started pondering about that piece, and I think that while it was good, it still didn't go as far as it should have. Yes, it was a fantastic bit of instruction on how to make a dungeon, and as part of that, an encounter. Yet there is still more to be taught. D&D (and many RPGs, in broad, general strokes) is at its base a series of encounters - a fight with monsters, a negotiation with a magistrate, an investigation of a dark, dank place, a chat with a local innkeep - and you combine all types of encounters to make a dungeon. Yes, not all dungeons take place underground, but since dungeon (or at least the base word for dungeon, the Old French word donjon) doesn't mean what you think it does, I'm going to use dungeon here to mean a collection of encounters, whether they're in a cave, in a forest, under the noon day sun, in the darkest night, or whatever. Next up the chain is adventure (I've also called it a campaign arc before, either one works), and an adventure is just a series of dungeons, or can even be just one big dungeon. Finally, campaigns are collections of adventures and/or single dungeons, trying to get the PCs to the end of one final storyline all the way from bumbling, monster-killing neophytes where they started out.
Mr Mentzer's 1983 work handles dungeons well, and as an unintended consequence, eludes to how one should create encounters. I now think that, while this was ground breaking and sadly forgotten, it did not go far enough and that any work in the future that attempts to emulate it should provide instruction at all levels of the chain: encounter, dungeon, adventure, and campaign. I am by far not the first to talk about any or all of these together, but I'd really like to see the big boys tackle their basic training documents for their DMs (or GMs, or Storytellers, or Referees, or whatever they call them) in this manner.
Friday, September 7, 2018
5e Needs a Frank Mentzer
This is an idea that I first heard about from Scott Rehm, The Angry GM. You can find a link to his blog over there on the right in my sidebar.
You have heard how cool this odd little game is, a game that has been around for decades, and so you set out to play. Okay, so the game needs players, and you have friends who have said they will play, but you also need a Dungeon Master, but no one else is available to do this. Your friends point out that this is your idea, you should be the DM, so you buckle down and take over the role. Or, as is more likely, you find a local gaming group that is already playing D&D, and begin playing. After a while, the original DM of the group starts feeling burnout and you get the itch to take over. Either way, you now want (need/have to/told your buddies that you will and now you're stuck) to run a game of D&D, so how do you do it?
As a conscientious gamer, you immediately go to the 5e core books to see what needs be done. The Player's Handbook is for players, obviously, and while necessary to the DM as well, not at all helpful in creating a dungeon/campaign. Likewise, the Monster Manual is full of nasty things to throw at your players, and even ideas of how better to use said monsters, but no great help on how to create a campaign. Ah, of course, the Dungeon Master's Guide, that's what you need! But wait - other than some very broad, general information that will be useful later on in your fledgling campaign, there's really nothing concrete here to teach you how to create a campaign, much less a basic dungeon. Even the starting box, the basic adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver, while it does give you a starting dungeon and adventure plot to run, still fails to teach you how to make your own dungeon.
Back in the early, early days of our little hobby, even when I was a wee little sprout, TSR (the creators/publishers of D&D at the time) redid their beginning box for Basic D&D, something that had been out for most of a decade at that point, and had a gentleman named Frank Mentzer do the heavy lifting on the rewrite. This is important because in the Dungeon Masters Rulebook side of the Set 1 Basic Rules (TSR 1011B, published 1983), Mr Mentzer gives you a 3-level dungeon for your first game. But he doesn't just give it to you, he makes you earn it. "Here's the first level," he writes, "this is what to say, here's the map, and these are the monsters." That's when the hand holding stops and the learning begins. "Okay," he continues, "you've got the first level, here's the map for the 2nd level and here's a list of monsters, you need to put them around the map and come up with your own descriptions." The training wheels have come fully off, and now he puts you right out there in traffic. "Great, now that you know all that, here's the bad guy for the 3rd and last level. Create a map for this level, don't forget to draw in the lair of said bad guy, come up with the treasure, the other monsters on the level, and all the descriptions." Isn't that better than just throwing you into the deep end?
I have to admit that even though I started playing D&D after this particular edition of the Red Box came out, I did not see it until the Angry GM pointed it out in the past couple of years. For the longest time I had 2nd hand, hand-me-down leftover random books, none of them from this printing, and by the time I got around to buying my own books, D&D had moved on to 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and so had I. And I also have to admit that while I've called out 5th Edition specifically in this rant blog post, D&D has never done anything like this since 1983. At least 5e is still being published, so they could easily rectify this and update the DMG or Lost Mine of Phandelver. The more I think about it, with the resources in the DMG to create encounters based on Challenge Rating, rewriting Phandelver to more resemble Mentzer's intro dungeon teaching lesson would be the best way to go, and wouldn't cost WotC all that much to develop and reprint.
{hmmm} That gives me an idea. Part of the creation of this blog was I wanted to share the 3.5 to 5e adventure conversions I have been doing for my current 5e game. Stay tuned for those, in addition to the game reports you've already seen me post up, and maybe I'll also start toying around with how I'd rewrite Phandelver to be more of a teaching tool than it currently is.
Until Wizards of the Coast steps up and does it themselves (or I finally get around to it), I cannot recommend enough this series of videos from another online, old gamer like me, Mr Matt Colville:
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Glutton for Punishment
As you might have gathered, I am currently DM'ing a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons game, but this is far from my first D&D rodeo, so to say. For me and many others out there, D&D was my introduction to tabletop RPGs, way back in the days of sometime in the mid to late 1980s (it's been so long ago, I can't remember exactly), but it was most definitely Basic D&D.
Quick trivia question and history lesson: How many editions of D&D are there? Well, we're on what is officially labelled "Fifth Edition", so you'd be surprised that this is actually the 9th iteration of said RPG. There was the original, colloquially and unironically known as OD&D (for Original D&D), followed by 1st edition, but even 1st edition contained Basic, Expert, and Advanced so already we're up to 4 distinct iterations. 2nd edition came out, and they narrowed everything back down to just the one edition for the 5th iteration. 3rd edition was very popular with gamers, but got split and reiterated into Edition 3.5 after Wizards of the Coast (D&D's publisher at the time, who themselves bought it from TSR, D&D's original publisher) got bought by Hasbro, for the sixth and seventh iterations. 4th edition came out and lasted for a few years without any splits or reiterations (and besides OD&D, is the only edition of the game I haven't played), and now we're on 5th edition, which also has yet to fork. See? Nine separate iterations. And really, I also like to include Pathfinder from Paizo, because it is a further split of Edition 3.5, and not so much a different game entirely and competitor of D&D as it is an improvement and continuation of 3.5e published as WotC moved on with 4th edition.
Out of all of that, 3rd edition is easily my favorite. It really seemed, to me at least, that the authors of that edition had plenty of support and backing from their managers and a real desire to head off as many questions as possible by codifying as many things in the rules. This last didn't always work for them, enough that they updated the rules set once themselves, but was further refined by another publisher completely. 4th edition felt like WotC was pandering to the World of Warcraft crowd (it feels that way to me, apologists, and lots of other people, so I'm not just being bitter here), and while that set of rules had some very interesting parts to it, it never appealed to me enough. But now they have (and I'm running) 5th edition... WotC really is trying with this one, but mostly it feels like an apology to all of us who skipped over 4th edition, while trying to simplify all rules yet still include all the most popular bits from every edition stretching back to OD&D.
I feel they've done a decent enough job with 5th, but you can tell that Hasbro (WotC's parent company) has really cut back on staff around the D&D production offices, as this current edition is missing a bunch of basic things that have been identified in several of the past editions as useful to both the DM and the players. As a DM, the reference tables in the Monster Manual are woefully lacking (check that, they're completely absent) and the two updates in Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes have mere stopgaps in amongst their extra content and still don't fulfill the needs of a modern DM. Since this is a teaching blog (supposedly), if you are DM'ing 5th edition, I strongly suggest you make the acquaintance of one of the many online resources that give you basic monster info in an easy to reference table, like this one here. There's also a lot of questions about the rules (theThief, sorry, Rogue, can Hide as a bonus action... they are standing in the middle of a room full of bad guys and no cover, what does that mean?) that are too vague - on purpose, to allow each DM leeway? or on accident? no one who knows is talking! - or poorly defined and just raise questions from all sides. There are more examples that I can give of this, but trust me, there are many things in the 3 core rulebooks and even the 3 supplemental rulebooks (the two I just mentioned and Xanathar's Guide to Everything) don't fully fix everything they should. Some of these books have been out over 4 years now, folks, you kind of expect something more than a few errata files.
I'm still running my current campaign using 5e rules, however. Yes, I know, I just spent two paragraphs praising another edition and critiquing the one I'm using, but I have reasons. Mostly it's the group I'm running for now is the leftovers from a previous gaming group, and they were playing 5e when I joined, so inertia is mostly why we're still playing 5th edition. That and it would be a real dick move on my part to tell my players "you've all got 5e books, that's fine, put them away and go buy 3rd edition (or 3.5 or Pathfinder) books 'cause we're playing that now!" Plus, while I have problems with 5e, it's still good enough that I can make it work despite the blemishes. Oh well, the current campaign I have laid out for the party stretches for a grand total of all 20 levels (though I've been toying with dragging it out into possibly in the neighborhood of level 30), but at some point, whether the party members retire (the characters, not the players) or I TPK the group, we will shift off of 5e to something else. There's always other games I and the party want to play (Tales from the Loop is already a good palette cleanser we use, but we have many others to hand), but unless WotC does a lot to fix 5e between now and then, I foresee switching over to 3/3.5/Pathfinder or even Pathfinder v2 (whatever that ends up being called). Already reviews of the Pathfinder Playtest are surfacing, and they are comparing it favorably to 5e, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Quick trivia question and history lesson: How many editions of D&D are there? Well, we're on what is officially labelled "Fifth Edition", so you'd be surprised that this is actually the 9th iteration of said RPG. There was the original, colloquially and unironically known as OD&D (for Original D&D), followed by 1st edition, but even 1st edition contained Basic, Expert, and Advanced so already we're up to 4 distinct iterations. 2nd edition came out, and they narrowed everything back down to just the one edition for the 5th iteration. 3rd edition was very popular with gamers, but got split and reiterated into Edition 3.5 after Wizards of the Coast (D&D's publisher at the time, who themselves bought it from TSR, D&D's original publisher) got bought by Hasbro, for the sixth and seventh iterations. 4th edition came out and lasted for a few years without any splits or reiterations (and besides OD&D, is the only edition of the game I haven't played), and now we're on 5th edition, which also has yet to fork. See? Nine separate iterations. And really, I also like to include Pathfinder from Paizo, because it is a further split of Edition 3.5, and not so much a different game entirely and competitor of D&D as it is an improvement and continuation of 3.5e published as WotC moved on with 4th edition.
Out of all of that, 3rd edition is easily my favorite. It really seemed, to me at least, that the authors of that edition had plenty of support and backing from their managers and a real desire to head off as many questions as possible by codifying as many things in the rules. This last didn't always work for them, enough that they updated the rules set once themselves, but was further refined by another publisher completely. 4th edition felt like WotC was pandering to the World of Warcraft crowd (it feels that way to me, apologists, and lots of other people, so I'm not just being bitter here), and while that set of rules had some very interesting parts to it, it never appealed to me enough. But now they have (and I'm running) 5th edition... WotC really is trying with this one, but mostly it feels like an apology to all of us who skipped over 4th edition, while trying to simplify all rules yet still include all the most popular bits from every edition stretching back to OD&D.
I feel they've done a decent enough job with 5th, but you can tell that Hasbro (WotC's parent company) has really cut back on staff around the D&D production offices, as this current edition is missing a bunch of basic things that have been identified in several of the past editions as useful to both the DM and the players. As a DM, the reference tables in the Monster Manual are woefully lacking (check that, they're completely absent) and the two updates in Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes have mere stopgaps in amongst their extra content and still don't fulfill the needs of a modern DM. Since this is a teaching blog (supposedly), if you are DM'ing 5th edition, I strongly suggest you make the acquaintance of one of the many online resources that give you basic monster info in an easy to reference table, like this one here. There's also a lot of questions about the rules (the
I'm still running my current campaign using 5e rules, however. Yes, I know, I just spent two paragraphs praising another edition and critiquing the one I'm using, but I have reasons. Mostly it's the group I'm running for now is the leftovers from a previous gaming group, and they were playing 5e when I joined, so inertia is mostly why we're still playing 5th edition. That and it would be a real dick move on my part to tell my players "you've all got 5e books, that's fine, put them away and go buy 3rd edition (or 3.5 or Pathfinder) books 'cause we're playing that now!" Plus, while I have problems with 5e, it's still good enough that I can make it work despite the blemishes. Oh well, the current campaign I have laid out for the party stretches for a grand total of all 20 levels (though I've been toying with dragging it out into possibly in the neighborhood of level 30), but at some point, whether the party members retire (the characters, not the players) or I TPK the group, we will shift off of 5e to something else. There's always other games I and the party want to play (Tales from the Loop is already a good palette cleanser we use, but we have many others to hand), but unless WotC does a lot to fix 5e between now and then, I foresee switching over to 3/3.5/Pathfinder or even Pathfinder v2 (whatever that ends up being called). Already reviews of the Pathfinder Playtest are surfacing, and they are comparing it favorably to 5e, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
In the Beginning
Hi. My name is Bill, and I am an old geek. Or nerd. Or otaku. Whatever. I am that kid that read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy in 5th grade. I have been playing tabletop role-playing games (RPG) and wargames since the mid-to-late '80s, and videogames on everything from Ataris, Nintendos, Segas, XBoxes, and Playstations to self-built gaming PCs for a similar amount of time. I used to play paintball, beat my friends with sticks (medieval recreator with the Society for Creative Anachronism), and even served in the Army National Guard for 15 years. I like watching movies and TV shows, reading comic books and webcomics, and books on dead tree husks and in a digital format. I have been there, in the trenches of the Dungeons & Dragons Satanic Panic of the '80s through the entire time that being said geek was looked down upon to now when us geeks "run this shit", per the Penny Arcade guys.
So this blog. I set this up to talk about all of my interests (see above), maybe even instruct the younger geeks (nerds, whatever) out there, and even make commentary on the world around me. As of this typing, I am DM'ing a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons game (and should be crossposting the posts about said game I made over on Google+), setting up multiple armies for Team Yankee but in 6mm scale, have partially built armies for Flames of War in 15mm, and dabble in everything from Cyberpunk 2020, Planet Mercenary, and Champions, to Mobile Frame Zero and Gaslands, and even on to working up my own Savage Worlds setting for S.M. Stirling's fantastic Emberverse novels. I've also recently purchased a 3d printer and been printing a bunch of stuff related to gaming, plus the obligatory Baby Groot and other knickknacks, so expect to see more of that. Yes, many of my posts will probably be about 5th edition D&D, because I'm playing that more now than anything else, but don't be surprised when I skip around a lot.
Truncheons & Flagons is a reference that I fully stole from Black Dog Games' Human Occupied Landfill game (thank you Messrs. Daniel Thron, Todd Shaughnessy, and Chris Elliott) and was in that work an obvious pun and parody of the name Dungeons & Dragons. I admire that work and have long thought the name funny as hell, I freely admit that I stole it whole cloth, but since I doubt this blog will result in any earned income, merely just be a place I can rant about whatever I feel like, I fully expect that won't be an issue.
So this blog. I set this up to talk about all of my interests (see above), maybe even instruct the younger geeks (nerds, whatever) out there, and even make commentary on the world around me. As of this typing, I am DM'ing a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons game (and should be crossposting the posts about said game I made over on Google+), setting up multiple armies for Team Yankee but in 6mm scale, have partially built armies for Flames of War in 15mm, and dabble in everything from Cyberpunk 2020, Planet Mercenary, and Champions, to Mobile Frame Zero and Gaslands, and even on to working up my own Savage Worlds setting for S.M. Stirling's fantastic Emberverse novels. I've also recently purchased a 3d printer and been printing a bunch of stuff related to gaming, plus the obligatory Baby Groot and other knickknacks, so expect to see more of that. Yes, many of my posts will probably be about 5th edition D&D, because I'm playing that more now than anything else, but don't be surprised when I skip around a lot.
Truncheons & Flagons is a reference that I fully stole from Black Dog Games' Human Occupied Landfill game (thank you Messrs. Daniel Thron, Todd Shaughnessy, and Chris Elliott) and was in that work an obvious pun and parody of the name Dungeons & Dragons. I admire that work and have long thought the name funny as hell, I freely admit that I stole it whole cloth, but since I doubt this blog will result in any earned income, merely just be a place I can rant about whatever I feel like, I fully expect that won't be an issue.
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