D&D 30 Day Challenge Day 4: Favorite Gameworld

Honestly, I don’t have an obvious favorite gameworld. I guess I’d have to say either The Known World (eventually known as Mystara) or the The Nentir Vale.  I’ve enjoyed both immensely. Perhaps it has something to do with the rulesets they used, which happen to be two of my favorites. Mystara being born of Basic D&D and The Nentir Vale being the core setting for D&D 4E. Kind of boring I suppose, but it is what it is. I’m sure there are lots of cooler D&D gamers out there who choose Planescape, or Spelljammer, Krynn or Birthright, or perhaps less imaginatively choose Dark Sun or Eberron (both of which are great btw). Then I’m guessing pretty much everyone else in existence (within D&D that is) would pick either Greyhawk (Old School) or The Forgotten Realms because it’s simply ubiquitous. Once you get out of D&D, I’m assuming we’ll say a lot of Glorantha, Baraive, Thedas, Hyborian Age, etc,

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Dungeon World: The New Old School and why it’s so appealing….part 2.

So, if you read this blog, you might recall a post I wrote a while back about Adventurer Conqueror King System, in which I sang it’s praises, while simultaneously lamenting that the OSR has not availed itself of re-imagining the classic games of yesteryear. Rather, they’ve mostly contented themselves with cloning them, or nearly so. ACKS was a standout in that regard, as it did more than just clone a previous edition. It did a great job of rethinking some of the assumptions of elder versions of classic RPGs, in particular, the end game and class structure. It embraced certain old school elements while pushing the design in a new direction.  To save you the trouble of reading my previous comments again, here is the exact quote:

“I’ve always looked at retro-clones with the angle that I’d like to see not just a clone, but an actual modernization of the systems of the past.” 

Well, Adventurer Conqueror King System is now joined by a new ruleset which I’ve just read and really enjoyed. It’s called Dungeon World.

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Active Defenses…or…Get Your Hands Off My Dice!

So, every 6-12 months, I see a thread pop up on RPG sites around the net. The concept is one of Active Defense. What does this mean? It means that, instead of monsters making hit rolls against PCs, the PCs are making defense rolls against monster attacks. Seems simple enough right? Right. So why does it keep popping up around the net but we don’t see a lot of rule sets designing their games around the concept?  Well, first of all, we actually do see a lot of games using this approach. However, they’re not doing it directly or consistently so sometimes people don’t even notice that it’s already happening. The other reason is that over time, many games have been moving away from the concept and I think that even though gamers didn’t know they were already doing it, they are noticing it now that it’s gone.

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Maintaining Momentum……for an entire year

I recently had lunch with one of my players and we discussed the current state of our game (and he very kindly commented that I’ve been ignoring this site). Beyond the general consensus that people are having a good time and seem to be looking forward to each upcoming game session, the idea of momentum was briefly touched on. It got me to thinking. I’m currently running a lightly modified version of the 4E Tomb of Horrors. As a module, it plays quite a bit differently from what we’ve been doing. Over the past year or so of play, we’ve been very story focused. The mainline plot has gotten a lot of attention and has developed from a nascent threat against a few small villages into a full fledged regional destabilization. The group just reached level 11 and so far the threats they’ve faced feel about right to me. However, in The Tomb of Horrors, things are different. It’s not nearly as story driven. It’s really more of a set piece than a story, although there is some narrative behind it obviously. There is a reason for its existence and the powers behind it do create a sense of mystery (and a pretty serious problem) that needs to be solved. Now, keep in mind, this is a D&D “super” adventure. That means it’s one of those big, hardbound books, chock full of traps, combat, enemies and more. It’s meant to be run over a long period of time and across many levels. It ranges from Level 10 all the way to Level 22. The way we’ve been playing, that will take at least a year.

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Hunter’s Quarry Poll: DDXP

So I’ve been watching videos coming out of DDXP about the next iteration of D&D. I’ve seen activity on forums ranging from hysterical accolades to hate-filled diatribes. I’m curious if others out there are following the news. Sound out in the current Hunter’s Quarry poll.

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What Will D&DNext Bring? Is a 5th Edition Really Necessary?

Ok, so the word should be out by now. WotC revealed they are hard at work designing the next edition of Dungeons and Dragons. If you missed this announcement you can check it out here. When I first read the news, I was curious and intrigued. I had been following the Legends & Lore columns of both Mike Mearls and newly re-hired Monte Cook for the last few months. I very much enjoyed their ruminations on past editions of the game, what we learned from them, and how they might impact modern design goals. The comments frequently devolved into a hot mess of hate-on-hate action but were frequently peppered with thought provoking responses. It was a heady time and a fun place to be as we all collectively speculated if these seemingly innocuous conversations had some higher purpose. It turns out they did. Hit the jump to find out how.

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The Dungeons & Dragons of Tomorrow

Over on Dungeons Master, Wimwick has a now-complete two part article on The Future of D&D. He starts out by rating core elements of 4E D&D as being a success or failure. Unlike some of the people in his comment section, he does so without the drama of hating on Essentials or comparing the game to an MMO. After reading his articles it got me to thinking. How do I think the current direction of 4E will influence the development of 5E as well as what would I want to see in a new ruleset. Or conversely, what would I want them to change and/or learn from what they’ve done in 4E?  Having had a lot of fun with every edition of D&D I’ve tried, this is no easy question to answer. However, I have a few ideas that would make D&D even better for me and my table. Hopefully, I can discuss these ideas without breaking the game for anyone else. Let’s give it a shot, shall we?

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Hungry for Treasure

So I was trolling the WotC product catalog and I noticed a book that was absent has made a return to the release schedule. It’s Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium. It’s billed as “A wondrous collection of magical treasures for any campaign.” and shows a release date of September 20, 2011. It was originally scheduled for release in April of this year but was pulled off the schedule sometime in January.  Word on the WotC boards and some podcasts was that the content would still be released, but likely digitally. They had said that they were not sure of the best way to release the content. I was one of the many gamers who were disappointed with this change. I had read that this was going to be similar in concept to the earlier Adventurer Vault books but with a greater focus on flavor and story. This is exactly what I had hoped the Adventurers Vault books would have been rather than simple compendiums of magical items. Don’t get me wrong, I love the AV books, but they could definitely be improved with the inclusion of more story elements. WotC has been doing a good job lately in that respect. Products like the Monster Vaults, Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Heroes of Shadow have done a lot to move the ball downfield with regard to infusing greater amounts of story into the content. I look forward to getting my hands on the newest feast of magical items come September.

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Poll of the Week. What’s a DM to do?

I was recently involved in an online conversation. A player relatively new to 4E was asking a group of more experienced gamers, myself included, about a situation he encountered and how we would have adjudicated it.  I gave my answer and was surprised at some of the answers that came back. I’d like to throw this out there and see what others think and why?

So here’s the pertinent info for the scenario:

The player in question was a Psion. He was outside a window of a small dwelling. An enemy combatant was inside the building and adjacent to the barred window. The Psion opted to use his Kinetic Trawl (Augment 2) power as he had line of sight and arguably line of effect to the enemy he could see through the window.  DDi Compendium explains Kinetic Trawl thusly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Psion made it clear his goal was to do damage to the enemy while trying to pull him, smashing him into the bars of the window, possibly doing more damage.  The Psion successfully scored a hit and normal damage was dealt for the attack. But how, as a DM would you rule on the forced movement?   Please answer below and explain in the comments.

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Taking your story deep into the fetid waters of The Witchlight Fens.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about The Nentir Vale. As I’ve mentioned, the main campaign I’m running takes place there and my group has really enjoyed fleshing out the details of the setting, both by using published materials and through the collaborative process. In many cases, the former is what has informed our use of maps.  There are lots of fun maps out there that are designed to be used in the base D&D world.  The latest of which is a tileset produced by WotC called Dungeon Tiles: The Witchlight Fens.  If you’ve been following WotC products releases as all, you’ll likely know the last year has been spent releasing The Essentials line of products. Included in this “evergreen” product line were a series of Dungeon Tile Master Sets. They covered, The Dungeon, The City and The Wilderness.  The Dungeon was a solid product, hitting the sweet spot between generic usability and inclusion of added details. The City was a bit weaker in design, burning too much tilespace on completely barren indoor buildings and not enough tiles for city streets (the box tops were building roofs), alleys, markets and other urban areas. The Wilderness was an outlier in that it really did exactly what it needed to do while staying focused on the most typical outdoor and woodland settings found in The Nentir Vale.  While these 3 tilesets do mostly what they set out to do: give a DM the ability to quickly map out the most common settings, they simply can’t do justice to all the little niches that are built into The Nentir Vale setting. Things like The Cairngorm Peaks, The Gray Downs and The Witchlight Fens are nigh unmappable with The Essentials tilesets. Yet, these areas represent some of the most interesting locations in the setting.  With the release of the latest tileset for The Witchlight Fens however, it appears WotC is looking to remedy this glaring omission.

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