Rambling about Knowledge.

This was originally written on facebook and was not meant as a blog post but I thought it was a thought worth saving.


I never thought of this before but...
If some one is very well versed in Literature and Especially the history of literature then that person would be considered very sophisticated or cultured.

A similar thing might be said about people into movies especially as they go into historically significant movies or maybe study foreign or indie films.

Yet I would guess that my vast knowledge of video games and roleplaying games including the history and development or even influences of practicably every gaming medium out there (I even have a few specialized areas of interest.) would be more likely to be seen as childish or a waste of time.

For example if I were to begin quoting Gary Gygax or stating the exact date D&D was published. Information that is publicly available I have actually been told that it is evidence that I am "Socially Awkward." yes this is a quote they are her words not mine.

Would we tell someone quoting Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or maybe someone who knew loads of information about John Wayne or Walt Disney, that they are socially awkward.

What I am saying is cant gamers or grognards be considered sophisticated if they actually have a deep and meaningful understanding of their hobby and it's roots. I am often jealous of people who can quote of books and authors, but maybe I shouldn't be.

What if someone like Patrick Stewart had quoted resources from roleplaying while on TV. If someone could quote Steve Jobs or Nolan Bushnell does that not show a similar intelligence as quoting Mark Twain.

I don't know anything about most celebrities but I bet I could give fairly in depth information about people that most of my friends list wouldn't recognize their names.

People like; Ed Greenwood, Hideo Kojima, Monte Cook, Charles Darrow these are people I would enjoy discussing because their names mean something to me. Unfortunately they mean nothing to most of the people I know where as I have no idea who that Kim Cardassian girl is.

But more to the point I know very little about things like moby dick or Schindler's List but I'm sure If I did I would be seen as mature and intellectual, instead of as a nerd or fanboy.

((This isn't necessarily a problem in my life but it does seam to be an oddity in my opinion.))

D&D Next: Future of Edition Wars.

For Many people the ideas behind D&D Next were exciting and appeared to be a chance to bring together many different play types and maybe bring a change to the conflicting world of Dungeons and Dragons editions. Most of this however was based on various promises by the development team.

“We saw an audience that had been divided by differences in editions and play styles, and wanted to design a version of D&D that all players could experience and enjoy” ~Mearls

I have been following D&D next as closely as I could as soon as I heard about it. I have joined in on the play test, read the blogs, and filled out the surveys and polls. Here is my opinion of what is going on in D&D next.

Wizards of the Coast Spoke very highly of these three things; finding what was common in every edition, establishing a strong and simple core and then adding in modularity.

In my opinion they are not doing this at all. First I’ll start with an example of not doing what is common in every edition. In at least three versions of D&D skills were optional, you could play completely without out them, with the exception of the rouge/thief. Currently in D&D next every class gets skills, every background gets skills and there is a skills specialty.

However maybe you could just cut all that if you wanted, right? Well that brings me to my next point every melee class gets Expertise Dice and practily every class feature is depend on these Expertise Dice, so to cut them would be cutting everything they currently have for the Fighter, Rouge and Monk. What makes it even worse is the Rouge is touted as being different from the fighter because he has Skill Mastery. So now skills are being used to balance classes against each other.

Sure maybe you could cut skills from all classes except the rouge and let them have skill mastery. But then lets not forget a lot of the rouges skills are not just “Rouge Skills” it could be Knowledge or Profession or Track it’s basically a complete list of 3.x skills with specific stat dependencies.

Well lets move on.

So what about these expertise dice, don’t like them and now every melee class doesn’t have their class features. Maybe you could play with no class maneuvers. Lets see you could rework sneak attack as that is now a maneuver and then remake the entire monk class and be left with a fighter who has no ability to cleave or precise shot. But that’s ok right not every fighter has to have maneuvers right, surely they even have an option for that. Nope every fighter has Expertise Dice if you don’t like it then rework the system yourself. Many people on the forums just say “well assume you use deadly strike every time.”

So for a straight and simple melee attacking fighter your either juggling when and how to use these special dice or at least assuming your spending them on Deadly Strike so for damage you’d be rolling something like 1d10 + 1d4 + Your Strength. That’s not too bad but certainly doesn’t look like a common thread throughout editions or a strong simple core.

Maybe you disagree with me though, maybe you think skills are a common thread and the Expertise Dice are a new way of handling common abilities. So lets move on again.

How about a very common thing like flanking or surprise, well in D&D Next this would give you advantage so Roll 2d20 and take the highest…..? Seriously roll 2d20 is a core rule for flanking and such. In what edition was this common? How about if your in a situation that’s bad were you would normally get a penalty; roll 2d20 and take the lowest. So unless your combat has nothing interesting going on your more then likely rolling two dice to hit. Sure you could just ignore it but as it stands that’s a core rule and has been for multiple playtest packets. I have seen no evidence that it will be bumped to being an optional rule, so you can’t just assume that either.

There are many examples of things like this but I’m going to give just one more. As it stands every current clerical healing spell works at range of 50 feet away. So cure light wounds is not a touch spell it is a power word that lets you heal your ally 50 feet away and still lets you attack that turn. This is the default option.

I have not seen any of these presented as optional or modular or any discussion from the development team saying that this is not their strong simple core. I see no common, strong simple core, and very little modularity. Even their critical hits are strange.

Maybe we will get lucky and by the end of the play test they will have a core that shows the common threads and simplest forms of D&D with options to adjust it to be what you want to play. But as it sits it is nothing more then an entirely new edition for which people will Edition War about!

My best judgment tells me this new edition will do nothing more the splinter the player base even further. I could go on with reasons why but this post is long enough already.

I wish the Development Team luck and hope the playtest goes well.

Unfortunately my players no longer want to play test D&D Next as they don’t want to deal with a new game or edition with new rules. We will likely be playing other editions of D&D and/or our own games. You can expect some future posts about Adventures Dark and Deep as well as a few custom content posts.


P.S. If anyone is interested in play testing the new edition I strongly recommend it as the more people play testing and sharing their opinions then the more likely it will become what the community or a larger community wants.

Back In

I got an email today saying I was accepted into the RPG Blog Alliance, which is weird since I didn't re-contact them in anyway. But if I really am back in the alliance then that's rather convenient timing since I am writing about roleplaying again as well as actually getting to play again.

Recently I ran a game of Keep on the Borderlands with a few small twists, first starting of with a keep from my own campaign setting, sibra1, and a few changes based on things from our last encounters in the caves of chaos.

But the main thing that was a new attempt for us using B2 was letting one player use a 2nd edition characters and another use a 3rd edition one, it really wasn't all that hard. Most things like death, xp, gold ect. was handled using basic edition rules where as each players skills used their respective editions rules.

One Page Dungeon: Infected House

I finally have my Kurahast Ruleset (based on 3e) ready for me to begin playtesting, and so I quickly threw together a small adventure site for low level characters.

It's not necessarily a quality product or even balanced for that matter but I will place the jpeg of it below. I used hexs instead of squares because for now I'm using hexs for everything, I'm bored of squares, lol.

Basically its an old house that is now infected with various bugs and vermin. Some of them can be whole colonies. I also layed some out to possibly help each other, and the large mosquitoes and Bot flies should be able to wander around.

I haven't done treasure yet and the file is rough looking because I slapped it together for my own use. If you roll to see how many creatures are in each area it could end up being rather tough for 1st level characters if they don't play smart.

Edit: Like any one page dungeon you should be able to easily adapt this to the system of your choice, however the exact names of these vermin match were taken from d20pfsrd.com so if your playing 3e/pathfinder you can get all the stats you need from there.

More on The Castle Ravenloft Board Game.

Yesterday, I bought the Castle Ravenloft board game and posted about some of the contents, at that time I hadn't yet played. Now I have played about two and half runs throughs and I have to say I'm loving it. The combination on the event cards and the different adventures has me never knowing what is going to happen yet.

We had a player randomly led deeper into the dungeon, encountering some spiders one of which ran even deeper alerting the main villain. There's blood mists and illusions and adventure specific artifacts. One of my favorite moments was drawing a card that revealed my ally was just and illusion and he was somewhere else in the dungeon. I thought I was fighting side by side with him but instead it was a swarm of rats about to jump me.

I recently read that the other D&D board game adds even more elements like chambers and villagers, and also a Legend of Drizzt game is coming out this month. This will be the first time in a while I have been waiting for a D&D product from Wizards of The Coast.

Today I am suppose to be running a Sibra1 campaign but I bet we will be pulling back out Castle Ravenloft again.

Dungeons and Dragons Board Game.

Yesterday, I bought the Castle Ravenloft Board Game. I read through all the rules and punched out all the tokens and generally just rooted through the whole thing. I haven't played a complete game of it yet but I gone over it enough I think I could without referencing the rule book.

Since I had no idea what the game would be like when I bought it, I figured I might as well write a post about it. Maybe someone out there is thinking of buying it but wants more info.


Characters:

The characters look like 4th edition characters but they lack the base statistics as well as fort, ref and will. They only have HP AC and surge value. The party gets two healing surges to share, which are used when you are unconscious. The cleric also has healing capability.

If you are knocked out and not healed then on your turn you use a healing surge if you don't have any you die.  Damage is not random and is very low like 1dmg or 4 for a daily ability. So the HP is likewise lower then 4th edition with characters having around 8 or 10.

You start with some At-Will powers, one daily and one utility. Your can level up once if you roll a natural 20 and have killed a couple of monsters, you only need l 5xp. Becoming level 2 grants one more daily power and a bonus to AC and HP and that's about it. There are no levels beyond level 2.

The Monsters:

The monsters have HP and AC but also have tactics. Each player will end up controlling different monsters at the end of their turn, by following the monsters tactics. Interestingly if two players are moving the same kind of monster then those monsters both act on both of the players turns.

The Tiles:

The dungeon tiles in the game are different then the dungeon tiles you can buy separately. They are all exactly the same size except the start tile, and they interlock on all four sides. The pictures on them however, show you where walls and such are. The tiles are used similar to how cards are used, with their backs face up and you not knowing which tile is about to be placed.

The Miniatures:

You get alot of hard plastic and not painted miniatures. Which I actually like, to me they are more durable then the typical Mage Knight like miniatures. They will certainty hold up against my kids alot better. With the exception of the skeletons they are not very flexible. Also, I think they are color coded.

The Counters:

There are all sorts of counters, for things like conditions and traps, monsters, items. Personally I think there are too many counters and don't know which way to store them is best.

The Learning Curve:

I'd say the learning curve is small. I think I could teach four people how to play the game without even opening the rule book anymore beyond my first read through.

One more thing though, the game actually runs out of an adventure book and not everything in the adventures are random. However they are simple enough and can even be played one player. I think you could make up your own adventures if you wanted but the game in general is far simpler then even basic dnd.

I think War Hammer Quest is far more complex. I don't know weather to play ADD tonight or try out the board game. Maybe both.