“The Lightning Thief” struck me as a natural translation of Harry Potter: teen, troubled in the real world, finds his inner, hereditary potential at a school for… fighters!
I just saw a preview for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Looks, on the surface, like the same thing, but with a ranged striker, complete with Chaos Bolt.
I’d like to see the Leader version. Whose superpower fantasy is of being the party cleric?
I’ve taken Chatty DM’s post as a challenge: how can I make wilderness rules, with lots of dice-rolling for weather and other minutiae, useable in an actual game?
My first goal was to reduce the Wilderness Survival Guide – everything the players need for adventuring – to one printable page. If you need to flip pages to find anything, the rules are too long. I can imagine separate single-pages for random dungeon or city adventuring, random encounter generation, and random treasure. The players could keep the appropriate page on hand – only one would be needed at once. This would be a fun board-game-style handout.
My second goal was to provide concrete resource-management mechanics for wilderness travel. Ideally I’d like the players to be able to make some strategic decisions. Take the low-level route or the high-level route? The civilized or wild path? The explored or unmapped path?
In a recent post from Chatty DM, he says:
I bought the Wilderness Survival Guide (X-mas gift I wrapped for myself when I was 15-16) when it came out. I disliked it so much that I threw it away and never used it, disgusted that I would ask my players to roll percentiles EACH DAY for food and shelter.
The 1st Edition Wilderness Survival Guide is also a book I read once and never used. I don’t remember being disgusted with it, but it never fit into any of my games, possibly because nothing important happens in the wilderness.
DMs are in the business of peddling illusions: illusions of meaningful choice to players when they are really on the rails; illusions of danger in a combat when maybe a fraction of a percent result in a TPK. Books like the 1e Wilderness Survival Guide, on the other hand, peddle an illusion to DMs. The illusion is that their campaign world is a real place, run by laws different from, but mirroring, the laws of the actual world. By rolling on the appropriate charts, the DM is running a universe. Many sourcebooks, especially those late in the run of any edition, lavish detailed rule considerations on things that rarely or never come up in play. Some of these make great reading: they allow DMs to imagine the perfect D&D game, with the DM able to raise a glorious edifice of simulated creation, using a million charts, all on hand, for players with infinite appetite for randomly-rolled minutia.
The Wilderness Guide has about 50 charts. I’ll list a few highlights: imagine having one of these situations come up in play and asking players to hold on while you find the appropriate page in the Wilderness Survival Guide.
-Effects of Clothing and Armor on Personal Temperature (for instance, in temperatures of 0 to 30, you are 10 degrees warmer if you are wearing banded mail)
-Damage from Free Fall or Severe Slope (this is a replacement for the classic 1d6 damage per 10 feet fallen rule: damage ramps up more quickly in this chart, maxing out at 20d6 for a 50-foot fall.)
-Grappling Success (I thought at first this was modifiers to the Grappling rules, modified for fighting on a slope, which would be HILARIOUS; but in fact it is chance of using a grappling hook on various slopes, modified by how slippery they are.)
-Chance of Food Spoilage (modified by type of food and temperature)
-Campfire Characteristics (degrees of heat by different types of campfires, provided at 10-foot increments from the fire up to 60 feet: what circumstance ever forces anyone to remain more than 10 feet from the fire?)
-Availability of Fuel (maybe in the desert, you can only make a Small campfire, which is trouble for the guys 40 feet away from it!)
-Reactions of Animals (where you can find out, I kid you not, the effects of odors on a yak! The effects are “6/10/12”)
None of these charts, nor most of the rules, have any relation to what happens in actual play. In a real D&D game, the DM has plot points he wants to hit, encounters he wants to run, and a ton of books open. While the PCs journey from the city to the ruined temple, the DM could remember all the relevant charts in the Wilderness Survival Guide, flip to the appropriate pages, and roll on the various percentile charts – but it’ll be easier to say “Ok, you get there without incident”, which is probably what he’ll do.
It’s too bad: the DM-as-world-simulation is a beautiful illusion.
So I’ve been working on an awesome adventure to kick off my new D&D game. The characters are all starting at 11th level, so that calls for something beyond “slay your first orc”, I should think.
The basic idea I have is as follows:
1. The characters receive a mysterious letter from a powerful mage beckoning them to The Ten Mile Tower. She promises to reward them with a powerful artifact if they meet her at the pinnacle of the tower but provides no other details.
2. The Ten Mile tower literally spans 10 miles into the air. It is said that from the top you can see half way around the world and touch the stars.
3. There is a legend about The Ten Mile Tower – that anyone entering its doors must leave the tower within 1 day or the doors will remain closed to them forever, trapping them inside the tower for the rest of their life. I may extend this to mean that the door locks within a day regardless of whether the person is in or outside the tower, meaning anyone may only visit the tower ONCE, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.
4. Different creatures roam the various levels (and there are thousands of levels!). Some of them fled the cruelty of the mortal world, seeking safety within the tower. Others entered the tower for various reasons (treasure, chasing pray, curiosity), stayed too long, and became trapped, unable to leave!
5. There are many stairwells up the various levels. However, at every mile up, there is only one passage up to the next level. It is usually guarded by a powerful monster who rules over the levels under it and decides whether travelers can pass to the next level.
I applauded the removal of the Identify spell from 4th edition. It didn’t seem to add anything to have a “this item is unusable” period between the acquisition period and the use/sell period. Still, I now miss one thing about Identify: it gave the DM time to think.
I tend to DM pretty off-the-cuff, and I wish there was some way to drop treasure without either sticking slavishly to wishlists or preplanning everything. I’m thinking of changing the rules so that magic items enhancement bonuses are determined right away, but their properties are identified after an extended rest, or possibly at the DM’s discretion. That way I could decide to drop a character’s economy-mandated axe +3, but not have to immediately determine which of the scores of potential axes +3 it is. I could browse the Character Builder while the PCs are exploring or planning; or even react to the PCs’ adventures (a PC who hits with an opportunity attack finds herself holding an Opportunistic Axe).
We played in a Dark Sun delve at PAX. We did a standard three-encounter delve through a gladiatorial arena, in which we fought, among other enemies, a savage halfling and some githyanki guards. I grabbed a couple of the 1st-level pregen character sheets (human warlock and goliath fighter) and noted a few fun Dark Sun-specific rules (critical fumbles, inferior equipment, and character templates, which seem to be the heroic-tier equivalent of paragon paths).
World Conceits
Flavor-wise, the world of Athas seems to cleave close to the 2e version: a darker and deadlier D&D; scarce metal; sorcerer-kings; templars; savage halflings; defilers.
New Rules
Inferior Weapons: Because metal is scarce, beginning characters have inferior weapons. Our fighter started with a bone battleaxe, and got a metal battleaxe as treasure during the adventure. The composition of the weapon affects the chance to break a weapon.
Breaking Weapons: If a character wielding an inferior weapon rolls a 1 on an attack roll, they have a choice: they may miss as normal, or they reroll their attack; if they miss again, their weapon shatterings. If the character happens to have a non-inferior (metal) weapon, they may do the same thing, but I think they have a smaller chance to break their weapon (on a roll of 1-5 on the second roll, I believe). This means that rolling a 1 has some of the flavor of a critical fumble, except that it is actually advantageous: it gives you choices.
I’m curious to see the full rules for this. It seems like a fun rule to use in early levels, but once you get a +3 sword you’re probably not going to want to break it in exchange for a reroll. On the whole, I like this rule: I think that something that elicits a cheer should always happen when you roll a 20, and something that elicits mockery should always happen when you roll a 1. Breaking your sword qualifies as mockery-inducing.
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I’ve been reading the first few issues of the Dungeons and Dragons comic from the 80’s. Spoilers ahead: in the first issue, the paladin fails in battle against the BBEG, and is struck with a Rod of Withering which renders his sword arm useless. Despondent, the paladin abandons his calling and becomes a drunken beggar – until a band of unlikely heroes convince him to return to adventuring!
I thought, this character would be fun to play! A severe combat limitation that would change your battle tactics, coupled with the kind of broad, slightly-overboard characterization you can get across in a RPG session.
At the end of the comic, the paladin’s stats were given. If I remember correctly, his post-withering strength was 3.
I thought, wow, that character would not be fun to play at all! Even in 1st edition, a strength of 3 would impose a -3 to attack rolls. In 3rd and 4th edition, that would be -4. In 4e math, where a primary stat of 16 (+3) means about a 50% chance to hit against most creatures of equal level, that would mean a character with 3 strength would hit on an 18-20. Of course, with the penalty to damage, you’d do about 1-2 damage when you did hit. That might be fun for an encounter, but it would be hard to maintain your enthusiasm throughout a combat-heavy adventuring career (or however long it took you to find Gauntlets of Ogre Power).
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I thought it would make sense to provide a link to the wiki for my campaign world here, since I’ve spend a fair amount of time working on it:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/a-pleasant-sort-of-world/
It’s pretty boss, and is built around the following general philosophies:
1. Points of Light: I really liked the new D&D points of light idea, and my world definitely runs with that; there are a few cool settlements dotted around the world, but for the most part it’s all wilderness and crazy dangerous places!
2. Heroes Matter: The basic assumption in my world (and this is another 4th edition concept, I believe) is that the world is in rough shape, and there aren’t a lot of badass heroes to keep things together. Enter the player characters who really are the people who keep things from falling apart. When they succeed, civilization continues another day, and they are rewarded heartily for their efforts! When they fail, the consequences are muttled at best and can indeed be quite dire!
3. Magic is powerful, present, and mysterious!: My world is filled with tons of crazy magical and fantastical sites, such as a tower that extends a mile into the air, gates that literally lead into the underworld, a sea that literally boils, and a wasteland that can only be navigated by a madman. However, most of it is incomprehensible or only half understood by ordinary and even educated people. So while magic is ever present, there aren’t a lot of people who can harness it for useful goals, and those who can are often guarded with that knowledge and highly valued.
The wiki is definitely still a work in progress and I add to it whenever new stuff happens in my campaign. I also plan to add a map for the world when I get access to a scanner!
WOTC introduced Backgrounds in PHB2, more than a year ago now. In that book, backgrounds were billed as a story element with only minor mechanical effects. Indeed, the mechanical benefits were limited to a piddling +2 to a skill or the ability to train in a cross-class skill – unarguably worse than a feat.
I assumed that the background benefits would inflate in the coming months, but they didn’t. New books are coming out all the time, introducing new backgrounds with new fluff, and all with the same small benefits applied to different combinations of skills. This shows restraint that I’m not used to seeing in D&D or in any frequently-updated game.
The only books that provide non-generic background benefits are campaign books: for instance, Forgotten Realms has location-specific background benefits that are often as good or better than most feats. This implies that non-trivial background benefits are tied to specific parts of a campaign world. This has kind of amazing implications. A DM using a homebrew world, who bans campaign-specific content, has implicit (though unfortunately not explicit) design space: player benefits that are
a) tied to parts of the DM’s campaign, which provides a convenient way to trick players into learning about its history and geography;
b) not in competition with WOTC-designed benefits, so the DM-created content won’t be ignored by players cherrypicking the best mechanics from all the books; and
c) created by the DM, so they can be designed for specific characters that the DM or players would like to see.
PHB3 isn’t out yet; I hope this trend continues, and, if it’s intentional, I hope it’s made official at some point so every DM can start creating their own homegrown backgrounds.
WOTC is coming out with “D&D Essentials”, intended to be a 4e version of the D&D Basic line that ran parallel to 1st edition. Seems like a good time to think about what “D&D Essentials” means.
I have a lot of nostalgia for older D&D versions, and I try to be aware of that nostalgia. Still, it’s hard to pick through and figure out which of my favorite things about old D&D editions were actually cool, and should be brought back or included in future versions, and which were accidents, or nonessential parts of its coolness: elements I love, where my love has more to do with my history with D&D than with their objective loveability.
One of the ways to make this distinction might be to try to separate what I loved when I was a kid newly introduced to D&D, versus what I love now.
My 8-year-old Essentials list:
-Dragons: My first D&D edition was the 1983 red box Basic set, when I was 8 or so. I have a distinct memory of thinking the page of dragons was awesome: their hit die total was so much higher than the other monsters in the bestiary. They were badasses! Also, you could subdue them, which meant that you would have your own dragon. Awesome!
-Dungeons: I liked drawing them as much as playing them. I drew a lot of dungeons, using the dungeon symbol key (squares for doors, dollar-sign S in the wall for secret doors); more dungeons than I ever played.
-Equipment: The idea that you could equip your character for the unknown with wolfsbane and 10′ poles – really be ready for anything – appealed to me. And, of course, I liked the power fantasy of getting magic weapons and items, and the gambling aspects of rolling for treasure on the treasure table.
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