DDXP and DnD Next

So I am finally expanding on my thoughts in regards to the D&D Experience (DDXP) and the new edition of D&D in the works, also known to almost everyone except WotC as 5E, to WotC as D&D Next (DDN). My guess is that WotC is avoiding the term 5E or 5th Edition to try to avoid the stigma of the edition wars. I can't say as I blame them, as long as they don't pretend that the fallout in the D&D community is one of the big reasons they have to dump 4E.

There has already been a lot of info in the gaming blogosphere about DDN and the info from DDXP. Like everyone else, I signed a NDA, so I won't be disclosing any crunch that wasn't talked about in the seminars, which were NDA free.


First of all, my impression from the playtest was very favorable. It felt a lot more like playing old-fashioned D&D as opposed to spending 3 hours trying to get through a tabletop approximation of a couple of WoW instances. We were able to get through several fights and our characters were in genuine peril. As a player, I would enjoy playing this system. As a GM, I could run it.

Any of my players reading this are thinking "sure, you could run it after you tamper with it, like every other game you run." That's one of the things that interests me about DDN, the intended modular rule design. It will be premade so that I can take rules systems I like and plug them into the framework. Yes, I'll probably make some modules of my own, especially since we don't know how many modules will be out at launch. My guess is enough to play the game, not they will hold some stuff back to make more books we'll want to buy.

One of the statements that caught my interest during the seminar was that they intended to include every class that has appeared in a Players Handbook, or the PHB1 in the case of 4E. That's a lot of classes. My first question was "do we need something like 20 classes?"

What really is the difference between wizards, sorcerors, warlocks and illusionists? Aren't warlords really just fighters with some leadership ability? Assassins are rogues that are more stabby and less thiefy. Barbarians are tough fighters (or rangers) with anger management issues. It seems like these could be handled with themes and class ability options.

I think the basic classes should be iconic. If you go to D&D players and say fighter, rogue, druid, wizard, they'll have a solid mental icon. Try sorceror, illusionist, and warlock and they'll probably look like the wizard. Say warlord and you'll get a blank look or a fighter. While I'm sure the designer are reluctant to let go of their 4E creations (and warlocks were actually my favorite class out of the 4E PHB1), the class list should be pared down.

I don't remember races being discussed, but my opinion is along the same lines. They should have the basic races and save the races created or added to the core rules in 4E (dragonborn, eladrin, and tiefling) for an advanced race option module.

I couple of other things in the seminar that I think hit the mark was their intended approach towards multi-classing and magic items. Multi-classing will probably work a lot like it did in 3rd edition, while magic items go back to being treasure and having some mystery to them as opposed to progression you can buy in a store.

So far I'm not in the playtest... and I guess even if I was it wouldn't matter as I couldn't talk about anything in it. But I'm keeping a hopeful mind regarding DDN and will buy the first round of books. Maybe WotC will turn me back into a game buyer as opposed to someone who peruses the internet looking for ingredients for his homebrew d20.

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D&D Next/5E - some thoughts

So unless you've been locked in a dungeon all week, you've probably heard that WotC announced the next edition of D&D was coming. Borrowing a page from Paizo's playbook, they were going to go to the gaming community for feedback, an open beta if you will.

The reason for this is that WotC alienated a large portion of the D&D player base with 4E, to the point that Paizo's iteration of 3.5 began outselling 4E. That made me think, what rubbed me the wrong way about 4E and caused me to give up my habit of buying D&D products?


So that you don't think this is just some Edition Wars rant, there were things that 4E got right. The math under the engine was balanced and easy to understand, putting together encounters was a snap for GMs, and monster stat blocks became easy to use.

So what didn't I like?

One of the first things that struck me was that WotC was going to scatter the "core" classes and races across 3 PHBs to make room for their own "new" classes and races. It felt like they were sacrificing the core game on the altars of establishing their own IP and forcing us to commit to buying the PHBs to get what we had before. I looked at dragonborn and tieflings as intruders that only existed to give 4E art a distinctive appearance, the warlord and the various new classes in PHB2 as interlopers that pushed out bards, druids and monks.

I didn't like that there were no more "simple" classes, as fighters took up just as much space as wizards with all of the power entries, while casters seemed dumbed down. The whole whiz-bang videogame feel felt wrong. Casters no longer had to worry about getting interrupted, targets were knocked about like soccer balls, and it seemed like everyone ended up with fairly similar powers.

The game lost its organic feel, become a game of structured encounters instead of stories. As a GM I hated the notion of a 16th level monster with 1 hit point, I never used the concept of giving players a wish list for their magic items, and I tossed out treasure parcels.

Fights, while balanced, took way too long. Combat over-relied on powers that forced movement on the grid, a grid that I almost never used.

What am I looking for from D&D Next? Give us back our core game with an organic world. Speed up fights and remove the reliance on movement inducing powers. Fights should feel like dramatic events, not entering an instance. Put some mystery back into magic. Quit trying to prove that D&D is your IP by flooding it with new classes and races.

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Skill20: Initiative

A post by Greywulf got me thinking about the old-school method of determining initiative every round and how I could integrate that into Skill20.

It meant that instead of Initiative being a resource, like focus and hit points, it would just be determined every round. I had to balance how that would impact spell casters, as before initiative was pretty predictable once the fight got under way. With initiative changing every round, casting spells, especially higher level ones, became dicier. I decided this is a good thing.

I debated old-fashioned weapon speeds for about 30 seconds, then dismissed the idea. Faster weapons almost always had less reach, and I decided the two balanced each other out enough for my purposes.

Different versions of D&D have used different dice for determining initiative. In my opinion, the d20 provided too much of a swing, while a d6 would seriously hamper spell casters and make any initiative bonus a major one. I split the difference and went with a d12. I'm still debating whether to add the Alertness bonus to initiative in addition to Dexterity or in place of it. (In Skill20 Alertness is an ability score, not a feat).

After the jump is my updated combat round breakdown and sections on declarations and initiative.


Combat Round (6 seconds)
1) Declarations
2) Roll Initiative
3) Start-of-round effects applied
4) Turns by Initiative order
5) End-of-round effects applied

Declarations
The players declare their actions and the GM decides on the opponents’ actions before initiative is rolled.
If an intended target is dropped, an attacker may attempt a DC 15 Skill/ALE check to switch targets. If successful, the attacker is at a -2 penalty vs. the new target, if not the action is wasted (but no focus is spent). The Skill is the one being used in the intended attack (Magic, Melee or Ranged). If a character has 10 or more ranks in the skill, a check is not required, but the penalty still applies.

Initiative
At the beginning of a round each side rolls 1d12, and then each character and monsters adds their Initiative Bonus and any penalties. This is their initiative score for the round.
Any initiative below zero counts as zero. A combatant with a zero initiative may only fight defensive, gain initiative, or second wind.

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Roll a d6

Continuing the trend of geek parodies of popular songs... while not on a par with Geek and Gamer Girls, this one is still amusing.

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WotC scaling back D&D output

The news from this Ampersand article has been lighting up the gaming blogosphere. WotC is cutting back on D&D production on a few fronts.

No more minis. WotC is ending production of its pre-painted plastic minis line. Minis may continue to be a part of board game products and there may be special releases. While that doesn't affect me much, and I think WotC bungled the way they sold minis, I could see this being a disappointment to those who liked having minis on the table but didn't have the time, talent or resources to paint up minis. In fact, I expect WotC to switch to counters like those used in Monster Vault to replace minis for tabletop.


Three books canceled. This is the "uh-oh" to me. The only reason to cancel these books is if WotC didn't think they make a profit, which means sales are decreasing. While I'm sure some will point to this as evidence that 4e "sucks", there are other factors besides the edition wars. WotC cranked out a lot of books early on, and now the market is saturated. There is also attrition due to people going to competitors like Pathfinder, the various home-brew clones, video/computer games, or leaving the hobby in general.

It also looks like WotC is abandoning the digest format used in the Essentials line, as an upcoming release has switched from digest to hardcover. The reasoning could be negative feedback regarding the new format or they will make more profit with a higher priced hardcover.

Finally, I assume the pulling books off the release schedule will fuel the fire of 5e conspiracy theorists.

No more Dragon or Dungeon compilations. To me, and I've read others express this, Dragon ceased when it went digital. So this change isn't a big deal to me, especially since I'm not a subscriber to D&D Insider. And based on the promise to continue the same digital output, it's not a big deal. I do wonder why, is there a cost associated with compiling the digital articles into monthly downloads? I would think this would be almost automated and would be worth keeping if it improved the satisfaction of a few customers.

While I find this news slightly concerning, mainly dropping books off the schedule, I also noticed hints that WotC will be putting more energy into other gaming products like board games. It reminds me of a FLGS that moved to a location in a fashionable mall. All of the RPG product was shoved to a back corner so the front of the store could feature board games and puzzles. Has WotC discovered there is more money in cardboard than books?

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Game Name Game

Back when 4E was looming on the horizon, I started working on what I called Project 39, my attempt to combine the best of what I had seen in the 4E mechanics with what I wanted to keep from 3.5.

4E hit, I blew up my campaign world to accommodate the huge shift it represented, and we converted our ongoing campaign to 4E. That last a few sessions until I hit on a way to do more granular advancement (something I frequently tinkered with in d20) and hit on the idea of 4lacarte, an a la carte advancement system where players bought powers, feats, skills and what not piecemeal, rather than a surge of power once in a while when they leveled.

Cruising the InterBlogs, I stumbled across Robin Stacey's Microlite system. The idea behind Microlite was to boil down D&D to its barest bones, with the basic rules taking up a couple pages. A small community developed around the idea, all doing their own takes on it. I realized it would be easy for me to distill down what I was doing into a simplified system, basically just expanding slightly on the Microlite idea but keeping my idea of advancement divorced from level. I called it MicroZ.

Microlite was bought by Seth Drebitko of Kobold Enterprise. Microlite20 or M20 continues to have its community and Mr. Drebitko is continuing to develop the system. However as thing progressed I could see his path and my development path were diverging enough that I felt that my system was not quite Micro and many of the mechanic introduced to M20 were not ones that met my needs.

I flirted with the name z20, a play off d20 and the z in Oz. But it isn't very descriptive, then I hit on an idea for a name that sums up the core of my iteration of d20. Skill20.

Advancement in Skill20 mostly hinges on Skills. While there is Stat (Ability or Attribute such as Strength) advancement, Stats don't change much over time. Skills are the driving force in this game. Hence the name.

I'll go into more details on Skill20 in a future post.

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New D&D Ad Is A Metal Flashback

Holy 1980 Batman! That is some old school art, mostly from the Fiend Folio if I remember correctly.

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I'm A Behir

D&D Home Page - What Monster Are You? - D&D Compendium

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WotC Ditching 4e Core Books

The rumor is out in the blogsphere and twitterverse that WotC is ceasing publication of the 4e core books in favor of the Essentials line.

Another blogger pointed out that it would make sense for WotC to stop printing the current core books because there is a ton of errata for 4e. Letting the channel run dry then starting a new print run with the books updated to include errata would make sense.

Maybe it's part of WotC's evil secret plot to ruin D&D? Or maybe it's just part of a business plan to keep selling product.

I'm just hoping I can hold on to the GenCon mojo long enough to work on MicroZ over my vacation.

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Musings On DDI

There is a lot of chatter in the gaming blogoshpere about 4e and the upcoming Essentials line. One of the items I see mentioned a lot is the DDI (D&D Interactive) Character Builder. While I have seen a great deal of praise for the tool, others bristle at the notion of having to pay a monthly fee.

I fall (or fell while I still played 4e) into the latter camp. After buying book after book at $30-$40 a pop, another $10 a month seemed like highway robbery.


The thing is, if DDI is as useful as its fans tout, maybe WotC should look at it as more of a tool to bring in more customers rather than a raw revenue stream. They could look at F2P and freemium MMOs as an example.

Buying a PHB would give you a code that would give you access to the character builder for races/classes contained in the PHB as well as access to Dragon. Buying a DMG would give you access to the Adventure Builder Tools and Dungeon magazine. Buying additional titles would give online access to the materials covered in those books. Of course, you could just buy the appropriate codes to gain access to the material you wanted.

Dragon and Dungeon become even more useful for previews to entice customers to buy those new books. I'm sure someone with more business savvy in the field could come up with more ideas along this vein.

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WOTC OMG 4E WTF?

It looks like the money train needed some steam, so WotC is revamping 4E with their "Essentials" line. As in it's essential they get more money out of us.

Supposedly they are simplifying things to try to make the game friendlier to new players, and maybe win back some that jumped ship to Pathfinder and the plethora of home-grown OSR (Old School Renaissance) systems.

And of course nothing says simply like 5 new books and a handful of other new products.

It looks like they are simplifying characters by eliminating daily powers and tweaking how encounter powers work, and paring things down to 8 classes and 10 races. While things are supposed to be cross compatible, so you don't feel like you wasted the last $500 you spent on 4E, the new classes will not be the same as the old classes. So you need the new books.

Or you can tell them to sod off like I am doing.

You check out the info here. But I'd save your money and go here instead.

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CNN Article On D&D

No, it's not the old-school "D&D is devil-worship" kind of article. It's a story about the new D&D Encounters, a program that WotC is running in game stores trying to bring people back to the hobby or get them to try it for the first time.

The article talks about how a lot of players have left the hobby due to lifestyle changes, which is true. People get jobs, families and other obligations and can't make the time to play.

A couple of things I find interesting. One is no mention for another reason for loss of players from the current game, the "edition wars" between the Old School/ 3.5 camps and 4e. These are people that still play, but don't buy WotC's product in doing so.

The other thing is that one of the complaints about 4e is that fights take too long. WotC deals with this by prepackaging everything for the adventure as opposed to looking at the mechanics.

Check out the article, if nothing else it's nice to see D&D get some press that doesn't involve us being evil. Along with comic books and rock & roll.

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D&D Gets A New Manager

It also gets a new boss. After a volley of layoffs, Mike Mearls was announced as the new manager of the D&D RPG. However, that is only one, albeit big, slice of the D&D pie. Bill Slavicsek was named as the brand manager for D&D.

What does this mean for me or for D&D players in general?


Reading Mike Mearl's post on EN World, his heart seems to be in the right place. It seems like he realizes a lot of the community is not happy with 4e and that he gets where "Old school" players are coming from.

That doesn't mean he can really change anything, even if he wants to do so.

WotC has so much sunk into 4e and is so intent on developing its own IP around it (hence Slavicsek's position), they aren't going to scrap 4e and bring out a 5th edition that combines what people miss about previous editions with what was actually improved in the game engine by 4e.

Then again, 4e may have run out of ammo. All of the classes and races they've strung out over three editions of the PHB are out. There are no players waiting for a PHB4, as that would just continue race and class bloat and a myriad of powers that seem to blur together. And for WotC to keep making money they need to keep printing books that players will buy. Looking at the upcoming line-up, it's a mix of recycled product and splat books to give you even more versions of "2W and slide 1" powers and builds.

Maybe Mearls will bring something back to the game that it's missing and I wish him well, but my appetite for 4e product is sated.

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More MicroZ Magic Musings

First let me say I hate retyping spell lists.

While I was working on MicroZ Supers, I came up with a mechanic to reflect the exertions of using more strenuous powers without taking them directly from hit points a la Microlite and MicroZ. Characters would have a Stamina score, equal to their Hit Points, akin to the Endurance stat used in Hero Games. More taxing powers and putting in extra effort would cause fatigue, as would taking damage, which would be applied to Stamina. Once Stamina hit zero, nighty-night.

There are a few more details, but that gives the jist. It would be possible for characters to run out of steam without being in danger of dying from it. I've begun to chew on whether I can apply this mechanic to MicroZ Fantasy.


(At this point my play-testers/guinea pigs MB and Weasel are probably going "here we go again".)

The trick is that the whole point of distilling D&D to a Micro game is to simplify it. Would this add to much complexity? Because now we'd have to track Stamina and Hit Points separately, with different rules for recovering Stamina.

My other worry is that spell-casting is more restrained than 4E and 3.x. And I like that, I've often sought a less videogamey approach to magic for my games.

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I Hit It With My Axe

This video (posted after the jump) posted on The Escapist has been a popular topic on the RPG blogs. Because it's not just a video of people playing D&D, it's a video of (mostly) porn stars and strippers playing D&D.

Before you get all excited and clicky, there is no porn. Everyone has their clothes on, it's really people playing D&D. We get to see the new player being introduced to making a character and the explanation of the basis of the game, something veterans will find familiar. There's the deliberation as the party debates how to get out of the latest jam (the new player wants to hypnotize the guard, freeze him, then chop him in half).

My favorite line:
[DM] ... and last session you started a drunken brawl, burnt down the inn, and killed a bunch of people...

That practically gave me flashbacks.

The video is not safe for work due to dialogue in a couple of spots, so use headphones.

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Feats For MicroZ

Note to self - I really need to update lordoz.com so I can actually post the rules for perusal.

Note to reader(s) - MicroZ is inspired by and based on Microlite d20.

Note to blog - don't worry blog, I won't leave you for microblogging like Twitter. I need more than 140 characters.

Any ways, feats. I decided that I still needed some crunch and customization options to differentiate characters a bit more. What I had seen in my a la carte experiments was that players loaded up on feats, both because they provided useful abilities and they had a flat rather than escalating cost.

I had two design decisions to make. How to handle and reign in the gaining of feats, and what kind of mechanics did I want to use for the feats themselves?


The first was simple when I hit on it. Break feats down by Stat association and tie the accumulation of feats directly to the Stat. Want another STR (Strength) feat? Buy up your STR. This limited the number of feats a character could have, meaning I could also keep my feat list small without characters ending up with most of them. But assigning gaining of feats to odd numbers greater than 11, I made to odd Stats actually useful rather than a stepping stone.

As for the feats themselves, in the case of skill-affecting feats I borrowed a page from Star Wars Saga d20 and used feats that gave a reroll under certain conditions or uses of skills. It's also possibly to expend an additional feat to upgrade it to rolling twice and keep the best roll. I just had to make sure not to let it be available for combat (including magic) skills.

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MicroZ - Testing Starting

So I got some positive feedback from my players when I sprung on them converting from 4e a la carte to MicroZ. The downside is that we haven't tested combat yet, they were too busy role-playing, investigating, and rescuing innocents from burning farmhouses to get in a fight. I expect the combat system to get a workout next game session when they catch up to the nefarious brigands that set said farmhouse fire.


At some point I need to clean up my LordOz website and post the MicroZ rules there, but I'm partly waiting to see how things shake out with the recent sale of Microlite d20.

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Starting on MicroZ

First to give credit where credit is due, and in case you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, Microlite is a super-condensed form of D&D. Intrigued by the possibilities I've started tinkering with the system.

Two of the big considerations are adopting Microlite for my level-free experiment, and adopting it for my campaign world.


Stats was easy. I'm keeping the three used in the original Microlite design, Strength, Dexterity, and Mind. While I debated on the idea of combining Intelligence, Wisdom/Willpower, and Charisma into the Mind stat or not, I finally squashed my mechanics-hydra by rationalizing that specific aspects of mental abilities are also reflected in skills.

Speaking of skills, level-free construction and the voices in my head required me to beef up the 4 (or 5 for expert) skills used in Microlite. My skill list consists of Athletics, Discipline, Influence, Knowledge, Magic, Melee, Missile, Subterfuge, and Survival. While this may seem to be a bit much for a "micro" system, these skills also replace attack bonuses, caster levels, and armor class (more on that in a later post).

Each class has three class skills, which they start with 2 ranks each. Class skills are less expensive to advance than other skills, but there's no rule to keep a fighter from buying up ranks of Magic. It will be more expensive and he won't have a mage's special abilities for casting, but effectively multi-classing is a matter of investing skill points.

Advancement is easy now (compared to my 4E a la carte). You have class skills, other skills and stats.

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Microlite Musings

First I suppose I should explain what Microlite 20 is. It's pre-4 D&D distilled down to its basic essence. Its beauty is in its simplicity and just reading the system makes me yearn for the "old days" of D&D.

Of course, what happens when I read a game system? My brain starts thinking of ways to muck around with it.


Oz, have you ever ran a game you didn't tamper with? - actual player quote.

If it's so simplistically perfect, why mess with it? Because I need some meat with my potatoes. The Expert addition actually takes a big step in the right direction. But I've gotten attached to the granularity I've gained with my a la carte rules-mods for 4e and Star Wars. The questions running through my mind -

Can I mod the rules to capture the flexibility and flavor of my current game?
Can I do so without creating something so complex that I might as well have stuck with what I have?
Can I balance it? (The biggest challenge of a la carte)
Can I use it easily with existing source materials?
Can I actually finish it before another shiny object distracts me?

Why couldn't I have stumbled across this before my vacation?

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The Future Of D&D

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

I can already predict the biggest stumbling block (after cost)... players would rather roll their own dice than virtual dice. What it needs is a scanning surface to could roll on that would recognize the surface of the die in contact with the surface and use that to determine which face of the die is on top.

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