My Take on 5th Edition D&D or D&D Next or Just Plain D&D

Seems the hub bub for the next edition of D&D has subsided a little...hub bub...do people still say that?  There has been a lot of thrashing and name calling.  I've never been one to get involved with edition wars.  I like to take shots at all editions.  I am an equal opportunity shot taker.  Granted, I was no where near a fan of 4th edition.

A very important and accurate illustration.  This image is copyrighted and can only be used if some sort of pizza arrangement it discussed before use.  Any unauthorized use of this picture will result in the sternest finger waving I can imagine.  The image of +Rob Conley's forehead was used without his permission, but since it's large enough to have it's own zip code, (see the size of the Enterprise, that's the actually size difference)...I'd forgotten what else I was going to say in this very long caption.

I played 4th ed. a couple times at home and at cons and had a lot of fun.  But it wasn't for me.  Now D&D, Hasbro and Mearls are shoving another version out the door.

Here's my hopes for the new edition.

• I hope it's good.  Most are still going to play what they like.  Pathfinder dudes and OSR dudes would be fine without a different version.  While the rules we use are older, it's the game we like, not the rules.  Football and baseball and all those other sports have pretty much been using the same rules.  But I don't love football because a field goal is 3 points, holding is a 10 yard penalty and the Steelers have the most Super Bowl wins (yeah, had to get that one in, suck it wannabes).  
• I hope their treatment of 3rd party publishers is not as stupid as last time.  There is no way to put it any other way.  They were stupid. 
• If D&D is good, and I have no quantifiable way to determine what I think is good, or not good, other than I would use the system to build an adventure.  But if it's good, I think it will help small publishers.  Maybe recapture some of the gold rush feeling during the 3rd edition era.  
• I'd like to see them develop a new campaign setting, maybe something interactive.  This is going to sound funny coming from an OSR dude, but the rehashing of the same old settings is boring to me.  I'd like to see something new to play in.  
• Stop making multiple DMGs and PHBs.   Annoying.

I've pre-ordered the Starter Kit or whatever its called on Amazon.  I've heard they are going to have a free download of the rules.  Smart.  I like the direction.  Although they need to get Mearls off whatever social network thingy he is on.  He doesn't help at all.  His comments at the time were confusing and annoying.  If you have a good game coming out, shut up for a little while until you can actually talk about it.

Okay, I'm done now...
























After credits scene...

Fear the forehead!

Failures in Gaming this Week

I'm not talking about the public D&D playtest.  My group had a chance to play it in the first round and we had a good time, but that had more to do with the group than system.  The name they throw around is D&D Next.  I think a more apt name should be D&D Here We Go Again.  I haven't been keeping up on all the details of who said what, who left, who stayed and why.  Frankly, I don't care.  The system is no mystery.  Another version of itself.  My point of interest is more aimed at their (WotC, Hasboro) attitude toward their clientele.  If its something akin to the past few years I won't bother with the system.  I hope they're friendlier to 3rd party publishers in short.  Until then, I'll sit back and watch it unfold.  The system itself won't determine if I get involved, but the SRD. 

The failures I am talking about is my own gaming.  My god, I've been slammed with glitches these past couple weeks.  This weekend, Secret World apparently has too big of balls for my computer.  I can play for 20 minutes then boom, blue screen.  My 360, thought I would play some MW3, after 20 minutes BOOM! it shuts down with two red lights.  Something I need to find out what it means.  Monday night game is cancelled because one guy has to wine and dine his boss another had electrical surges through his house.  Wednesday night that hasn't even happened yet was cancelled due to one going to a convention and another is recovering from a cold.  Apparently I was not mean to game.  The conscious ether is telling me to work on Issue #2.  Which I did and lost all my edits in one of the blue screen crashes.  Now I have it saved on a flash drive.

I believe I rolled a 1 for gaming this week.

5e Play Test

Last night I got to participate in a 5e play test. It consisted of creating characters and a battle with a troll and some goblins.  We'd entered a dungeon, but didn't get too far into it.

I won't go into too much detail other than many of us have seen these rules before.  They lean more toward older editions than 4e.  There is a cool rule about magical healing.  Monsters have low hit points, but do a lot of damage.  And we had a good time.  I still need to fill out my questionnaire which is what I like least and best about my experience and if I had any questions about the rules. I'll fill it out tonight.

I am hoping this outreach towards old school guys and the reprints is a step toward a friendlier relationship with everyone.  That they realize its not just their rules that needed to change, but their attitude.  I'll be adding that to my feedback email also.

5E D&D In the Word of Tom

Tom Doolan has a very good post over on his blog, in the Words of Tom.  Another post about Wizards announcing a new addition to D&D.  I guess they are calling it 5th edition.  I like his honest take on it.  I don't have a dog in this fight.  If they put new version out cool.  That always stirs a ton of reknewed interest in the RPG industry.  But if it stinks, no big deal for me.  I plan on playing whatever floats my boat at the time. 

So go check out Tom's post and his blog as a whole.  A lot of good stuff over there to check out.

First Homemade Dungeons

When I first started making my own dungeons it was pretty exciting. It was the first time I realized I could 'do it'. Make my own thing. Back then we didn't know the adventures sucked and frankly we didn't care. We were rolling dice (any that rolled off the table did not count), spilling pop on the carpet and too poor to buy pizza. It wasn't uncommon to play a marathon session until the DM passed out. There were no cell phones, texting, video games, and no personal laptops to distract us from the game. It was what we waited all week to do.

My first dungeons consisted of a Manila folder with a graph paper map taped to the inside and some random tables taped to the other side. The maps were basic. Boxes connected by hallways. Once in a while I would go nuts and make a slanted hallway. Pits were often a common feature. Usually I would roll a d6 and that's how many pits I would put in. Throw in as least one place where there was a secret door. It didn't matter that it made sense. It just mattered that it was there.

Room descriptions were basically who lived there, one feature of the room, maybe there was a table or chair, then the treasure, where it was located and if it was trapped.

Populating the rooms was done by hit dice usually. I'd go through and pick out all the 5-7HD creatures and start picking out which ones I wanted in which room. These were very static dungeons. The creatures just stayed in their rooms waiting for the PCs to arrive and take their treasure. There was no parlaying with them you just rolled to hit. Back then everyone had every special ability, AC, HD, and damage memorized. Even though I was making my own adventure it never occurred to me to make my own monsters.

After populating the dungeon I would use the treasure type given with the monsters and roll to see what they had. So there you have a bunch of ogres sitting on a pile of gold with 2-8 potions. I'd roll on the DM Guide tables to see what powers the potions had and if there was a magic item roll to see what it was. Another thing that never occurred to me at the time was if an ogre had a +2 club in his treasure it just sat in a chest or on the pile never to be used by the ogre. Don't know why, but of course eventually that changed. The location of the treasure was in a locked chest. And none of the monsters ever had the key. Not sure how they looked at all the pretty shinies.

And lastly experience points were handed out in great gobs, if the characters survived. Back then PCs only had one gear and that was forward. Retreat was not an option. Kill and take the treasure was all we knew.

On a side note one of the most important things I learned was to have a cool dungeon title name. Even if it was like every other dungeon out there if it had a cool name people wanted to go through it. I would reserve seats when I would DM my Taps Six Dungeon. The title meant nothing really, but everyone wanted to go through it to find out what it was all about. It was about kill them all and take their treasure.

Monster and Treasure Assortment

This was one of the first non-core book, non-adventure module gaming supplement I purchased. You've got the great Tramper cover art and other small pieces woven in. Basically this is a two sets of random tables divided between monster and treasure. The title wouldn't make much sense otherwise. And each set is divided into nine different levels. Formatting wise, what I love, is they wasted no space. Even the backside of the front and back covers are used.

I used this book to help populate my 'folder modules' (I used Manila folders and would staple my map to the inside and some information about the dungeon on the other so when we would play I would use it like a regular module from TSR). I would draw a dungeon on graph paper, number the rooms and then start rolling. All the treasure and monster tables use 100 entries in each. No duplication or fudging with saying on a roll of 44-48 1-6 Orcs. Each one is assigned one number.

An example room would be this. I'm going to use a 5th level table for both monster and treasure. I rolled a 88 for the monster so that gives me 1-4 Giant Rattlesnakes. And I rolled a 17 for the treasure giving me 1 jewelry worth 3000gp. Now in the front of the book are three tables for how to present the treasure. One is what is the treasure contained in, the next what is it guarded by (traps) and the last one is what is it hidden by. The contained and hidden b are d10 and the guarded by is a d16. So let's see what's going on with this treasure. The treasure is contained in an iron trunk, trapped with spring darts firing up from the top of the container and is hidden under a loose stone in the floor. Of course you may only want to roll on one or two of theses tables, but its fun to roll on all three and keep what you like.

I know I stocked a lot of dungeons using this book. It is simplistic and will make dungeons that have no rhyme or reason, but that's okay. It may spark some great ideas by positioning a couple of things near one another you would have normally never attempted.

Interview with Bob Liddil: Part 2

Part 2 of the interview with Bob continues with his views of today's gaming industry and an exciting announcement.

SHORTS: Do you follow the gaming industry today? And if so, what's your opinion of the state of gaming?

LIDDIL: Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast, which owns Dungeons and Dragons. Four words; big boring corporate suits. I moved on from the game publishing industry when WOC burned the world down with Magic Collectible Playing Cards. It was comparable to “the day the music died” in Don McLean’s classic song, “American pie.”

Until recently, I never looked back. All the hard work that the hard noses and stiff necks put into destroying gaming was wheel spinning. In the end, it was corporate greed; big dollars that sunk gaming, as I knew it. In the end, the card and dice industry were the winners and literacy was the big loser.

As for my opinion of the state of gaming today; I believe that in today’s world, Dungeons and Dragons and the peripheral publishing that went with that genre would not stand a chance against Internet, instant movies, 500 channels of TV and video game consoles.

America is on a downward spiral toward functional illiteracy. There has been such a “dumbing down” of youth as a result of educational laziness that I doubt if 3 in a thousand youths challenged to do so could tell an original story equal to a two hour dungeon game.

It’s disheartening that we are “tweeting” our way into a literary abyss where Perez Hilton being called a pedophile by Demi Moore makes the front cover of the LA Times.

Still, when I published via print on demand 100 copies of “The 30 sided fantasy and Other Tales,” last year, 94 sold immediately and recently a copy showed up in Europe with an asking price of 40 odd euros. So maybe I am wrong and Gaming has simply ceased to be a mass-market prospect for the likes of corporate giant Hasbro, who thinks that “GI JOE” should be a movie.

I hope so, because "Little Shop Of Poisons and Potions 3 - Apothecary in Dungeon Deep," my new book scheduled for the winter of 2010, the news of which is exclusive to this blog, is gonna need an audience who knows how to laugh, kill and die.

SHORTS: It's great to hear you're publishing a new gaming supplement. What prompted to return to publishing gaming supplements?

LIDDIL:I had been noticing a surge of interest in my older works on forums here and there and that there was some interest still out there. So, beginning with The 30 Sided Fantasy and Other Tales, a completion of the “30 sided trilogy,” I began to think in terms of a new project. Noble Knight did so well selling the 30, I am wondering how they would do with a 3rd Poisons and potions book.

That it would be a new poisons and potions book; the idea came from you. You are working in an active campaign in a hard to grasp world. Into ever life a little vial of potion must fall.

I plan to send # 1 of the new first edition to you personally, signed and numbered, with a thanks for the inspiration.

SHORTS: What can we expect from your new book?

LIDDIL:The new poisons and potions will be a little more death intensive than last round. The Assassins’ Guild chided me for not being “killer friendly enough” and did not accept my explanation that Grimm has been studying exotics for these last years. There will be 30 new objects associated with poisons and potions and a “side effects page that will make freewheeling dungeoneers much more cautious in their imbibing habits

SHORTS: Will Little Shop of Poisons and Potions 3 include short stories like the others?

LIDDIL: Yes. The further adventures of Fleet O Feet, the erstwhile alchemist’s apprentice is shaping up nicely. Several stories are completed and several more are rattling around in my head.

Below is an actual entry from the new book, which I present to your readers for their campaigns. It comes in a little blue crystal vial with a symbol of an octopus on it.

# 10 Essence of Octopus

Of all the creatures that swim in the warm waters of the Boiling Sea, few are more terrifying than the Giant Octopus. These titans of the deep have been known to attack passing ships and grab Nauticals and men alike right off the decks, dragging them screaming to their graves wrapped in huge tentacles.

There is another octopus though, a miniature one that is little known outside practitioners of the arts of alchemy. It is known as the Blue Striped Pigmy Octopus. Its signature blue and white parallel stripes distinguish it, a bold statement that says, “Don’t tread on me. I am very, very poisonous.”

Two liquids are harvested from this creature by specially trained (and not too smart) Nauticals. The INK that it ejects when frightened is particularly useful when mixed with magnetized iron filings to form thick writing ink.

The contents of Blue Striped Pigmy Octopus’ venom sack are a natural 2-step poison that assassins covet hungrily. There is no known antivenin for “Essence of Octopus.” Administered through puncture or edged wound, (often by dart), it is a guaranteed death sentence.

Classification: Lethal Cocktail of hemotoxin and Neurotoxin
Cost: 4,400 GP per 1 oz vial
Number of Applications: 1 by volume but it can be stretched due to toxicity
Mixing Agent: Counterintuitive to mixing
Special Properties: Paralysis or “Living Death” precedes actual death

Thanks for inviting me on your blog.

Should We Let D and D Die?

The Rules Magis over at the Gamer's Closet wants to pull the plug on D&D. What do you say? Should we toss D&D on fire for kindling. I agree with him on the cookie cutter classes and I've never been a fan of the Vancian magic system. I don't think MMORPGs are much better though. Lord of the Rings Online for example, I had a 50th level Hunter. He was cool, but every Hunter at 50th Level had the same powers. There were slight differences in wardrobe, but not much. So I think most MMORPGs suffer from the same short comings as a system like D&D does.

Mechanical wise, I am not as much of a fan as I once was, but what I think we sometimes forget or that gets put the side (and this is going to sound corny as hell, but it is true) is that it's not the classes, skills, spells or equipment that matter. It's the journey that matters. It's the time we spend playing our character, having fun with friends, embarrassing ourselves when we finally kill the last boss with only 1hp left. Sit me around a table with friends, with any game, give me a fist full of dice, pizza delivery on speed dial, and a few cold cokes in the fridge and don't care if we play Monopoly, charades or D&D. It's all good.

So should we let D&D die? I vote no. I think there is still some life in the old girl.