Look at the current D&D landscape; 4th edition sold well, but divided the gaming community. Many longtime players ignored it or launched into endless edition wars in forums.  Others embraced the new version. Wizards recently made changes to the line and moved to the “Essentials” edition geared towards beginners. More infighting began and the community fractured again.  If that was not enough, now there is a push to use CCG booster packs in the game (Fortune Cards).  More fracturing and angry words resonate across the internet at the announcement.

Infighting aside, Wizards has D&D branded products everywhere, including:

MMORPG

Subscription website

Fortune Cards

Novels, too many to count

Comic books

Soda

Pillaging old campaign settings and repackaging them for a new edition(Dark Sun)

It all needs to end…for a while.

I absolutely want Wizards to make money with D&D. Profits equal more product, marketing (such as sponsored conventions, online events, etc) and a thriving RPG community.  That said, Wizards pushes the brand too hard, too often and too desperately for my taste. Brands require management and excessive exposure and licensing leads to the brand deteriorating. A famous example of this is “Star Trek.”

Star Trek rose from the ashes of cancellation in the late 1980s with “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” It was very popular and it spawned “Star  Trek: Deep Space Nine.”  DS9 did very well and along came “Star Trek: Voyager”. Still pretty good, but relied a bit too much on  Jeri Ryan’s ass for its ratings.  Still “Voyager” limped to a completion and did well enough for another series: “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

May Gene Roddenberry forgive their trespass.

Awful does not come close and horrific is inadequate. Enterprise flat-out sucked. Sucked so badly it killed Star Trek as a television franchise. So Trek rested and rose again with new vitality with the “Star Trek” movie, created by a new group of talented writers. Writers without three TV series worth of baggage.  Trek endured.

It is this same death spiral I see with D&D today. More and more product pushed to a very loyal consumer group without regard to the consequences. I think WOTC’s brand management is more interested in short-term profits than long-term health of the brand.  It is my assumption that pressure from Hasbro to wring more profits out of the brand during the recession is part of the reason, but I may be wrong. Regardless,  I want D&D to endure and the best way for that to happen is a hiatus.

Two years, bare minimum of no new product. Nothing. No board games, no comic books, no releases of any kind. Shut it down.  Move all the existing staff to new projects.  They did a great job, but you need to drill new wells before the old one runs dry. After one year, hire a group of talented writers from outside the company and start building a new version of  ”D&D.” Call it “5th Edition,” since everyone will call it that anyway and let your new writer’s stable go crazy. Nothing is off the table except what came before. Stop pandering to 40 year-olds that want more “Forgotten Realms” material and start pandering to 13 year-olds! Stop revising 2nd Edition campaign settings and create fresh, original worlds to play in. Be original!

My rant is at an end. I love D&D, but too much of a good thing is still too much. A hiatus will breathe new life into the brand and guarantee its survival for years to come.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

The 4th Edition D&D Executioner

betting on when 4th Editions Dungeons and Dragons goes away is just good fun. I believe that Wizards of the Coast’s current business model is to flog the current rules set to death with monthly book releases until interest wanes. Once sales of “Player’s Handbook 22″  start to dip, they will announce “5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons” and let the axe fall on 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.  The new edition will set off another round of edition wars and a frenzy of content purchasing by the gaming public. I am curious when you think this will happen.

The rules of the “Livingdice.com D&D Dead Pool” are very simple. Enter by posting a comment on this post with the date you believe the game will RELEASE. I want to be very clear on this. The date the books actually hit the stores is what I am looking for, not the announcement date of a new edition.  This dead pool is mostly for the glory of correctly predicting the next iteration of D&D, so the only prize is a bit of notoriety and bragging rights.

Update: Changed my mind, I am going to throw in a gift certificate of some kind using my vast profits from this blog.  Probably to a PDF vendor  or online game store, amount to be determined.

It may take a LONG time to determine a winner, so be patient. It could be next year or three years from now. Also, the winner is the person closest to the actual date, even if you are past the date. This is not the  “Price is Right.” Going over will not hurt you. Ties will be determined using some random method at my sole discretion.

So read the entrails, stars, cards or whatever method you choose for a vision of the future, post your best guess and check back to see who predicted the next version of “Dungeons and Dragons’” arrival!

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

We (RPG bloggers) focus too much on “Dungeons and Dragons.” Save the pointless “old vs new school” arguments for someone else’s blog. I am interested in the entire “D&D” brand, from the very first 1970′s booklet to the latest digital offering. It seems like this one game dominates the entire discussion about RPGs and that is dangerous.

Dangerous for a couple of reasons, first is my ongoing concern that smaller RPG companies with quality products do not get a fraction of the press exposure that “D&D” receives. Exposure that translates directly to sales and their overall financial health. While a monopoly in the RPG industry is simply not possible, D&D’s size, brand recognition and WOTC’s marketing muscle clearly dominate the market. It also is dominating the discussion of RPGs and I am saddened to think that players out there might miss out on a great gaming experience because a really exciting RPG never gets the exposure it deserves from RPG bloggers.

Exposure has more than some abstract impact in the Internet age. Remember that bloggers by talking about and linking to game companies, directly impact search engine results. Those results matter in both traffic and potential sales. Over at rpgseek.com, I have a search engine that is only populated with game publishers…except WOTC. I created a separate search engine for 4E because of the 500+ publishers in the engine WOTC appeared at the top of the search results for almost every keyword, save for specific game titles or web addresses. I could not make it work with WOTC in the mix. They have too much Google “mojo” in regards to gaming keywords.

Did bloggers put WOTC at the top of the search results? Of course not. Armies of loyal D&D players did it. That said, bloggers as a group might move a smaller publisher from the bowels of the Google search results to the first or second page of a search result, which would have an impact.

Over and above concerns about exposure and search engine results, I have a more abstract fear. That of an RPG monoculture. The complete reliance on limited providers of a good or service leaves you vulnerable catastrophic failures. Think of a small town totally reliant on a single company for all of the employment. Should the company fail, the town suffers and likely ceases to exist.

I am not saying that WOTC or Hasbro are in danger of extinction. To the contrary, as of their last quarterly report, they are weathering the current recession quite well. My concern is based on history. TSR was very successful and then internal conflict, truly terrible business decisions and clueless management nearly killed it and the D&D brand altogether.

Any company can fail. WOTC can fail. Hasbro can fail. That is the nature of capitalism. WOTC and its marketing arm significantly impact the community as a whole. Think of all the marketing, convention support and organized play groups (RPGA) supported by WOTC. Imagine all of this suddenly gone and the impact on the entire gaming community. Even if you hate “Living Forgotten Realms,” there is little argument that it drives people to game stores and conventions. WOTC’s demise would not kill the gaming community, but it is certain to damage it for years to come. This does not even describe the carnage among game stores that make a not-insignificant amount of their retail sales from WOTC products. Other companies would fill the gap, but that takes time and might be the death of many game stores and conventions until the industry recovers.  Right now, there is no clear “heir apparent” should WOTC fail. In fact, I would much prefer an army of 20-30 companies that might rise collectively to fill the gap. Companies that are getting short shrift from bloggers focusing on the “King of the Hill.”

I am sure that many disagree with my assessment and think that everything is just fine in the RPG blogosphere and that the focus on D&D is a function of its popularity.  I am not arguing for a quota or some kind of D&D boycott in RPG blogging content. People should write about what interests them. What I am arguing for is a bit of introspection and perhaps taking a harder look at the broader gaming industry as a whole in our blog posts.

For the record, I am a huge D&D fan since 1983.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Before I jump into my main question, I need to provide a little background about myself. I have a university degree in rhetoric. Yes, they offer a degree solely in rhetoric. We studied Plato and the usual classics, but a large portion of the degree covered how to analyze the influence of words and images on an audience. We spent hours looking at advertising and dissecting the tricks used to influence the audience to buy a product. Ultimately, it was about using emotion to influence perception. Words or images of smiling, healthy people on a cruise tries to touch a part of our psyche that desires that state of affairs. It is a visceral, subconscious response that influences our conscious behavior (buy a cruise).  Just a picture of a boat without the smiling people has far less impact. There is no emotional “distortion” of the image. A ship is just a ship.

It is this distortion that interests me. A few days ago it occurred to me that much of my perception of anything “Dungeons and Dragons” is colored by decades of memories. This is simply a part of life, but it did inspire my question: How much is the historical, emotional attachment to Dungeons and Dragons affecting perceptions of 4th edition rules? Would you be as satisfied ( or unsatisfied) with the rules set if it did not wear a D&D cloak?

This is not an attempt to start an old vs new school argument or bashing the rules set. I truly am interested to hear if gamers would play 4e rules without 30+ years of D&D emotional baggage and expensive marketing. I came up with an answer for myself. What that is does not really matter. I would rather not taint the results with my opinion.  I challenge you, gentle reader, to embrace your biases and seek the answer to this question yourself: If you wandered into a book store and found a plain, photocopied booklet of 4e rules would you use them ?

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

A Tripping Victim

“Fakiness” is my term for the ability of any role-playing game to accurately simulate the completely unreal fantasy worlds that players aspire to experience. If you are playing in the standard elf-ridden, high magic, medieval England clone, then the role-playing game system needs rules to accommodate the tropes and trappings of that world, such as elves, magic, impossible combat maneuvers and other feats of derring-do.

These rules allow players to experience the world that lives in their heads, based on their personal experience and cultural inputs, like movies and books. Should the game system omit a key point, say magic as an example, the game is worse for it.

Herein lies my complaint; why the hell can’t I trip anyone in 4th Edition? Wait, before you start flaming me in the comments about how you can trip in 4E, read on. I do not want to hear about some “Dragon Magazine” article, supplement or feat that allows a “once per encounter” trip attempt by a specific character. I want every single character to have tripping. Look at the source material! Virtually every movie or book in the fantasy genre has at least one character at some point in the story tripping a bad guy at a critical moment. Usually the tripper is a non-combat character who just gets lucky, saving the designated hero in the process.

Fakiness demands that the peasant child should be able to trip the villain as he runs past to slay the designated hero. What are beautiful, but non-combatant princesses to do without a comely leg to hinder an attack? What about the dark stranger with a mission that does not want to reveal himself to the PCs just yet? How can he help them in combat? Easy, stick out a leg and foil a back-alley ambush.

All of which is impossible in 4th edition without a specific character class or a feat chain. I am especially annoyed because of the list of “universal” combat maneuvers that all PCs get.

PCs may:

Bull Rush
Grab
Charge

A halfling can try to grab a mighty knight, but he cannot trip him? Where is the fakiness in that? Yes, I know trip is relatively powerful, since it can limit actions in the next round. In the overall structure of a 4E combat, I cannot fathom how it would make a huge difference. It costs the victim a move action to stand up, annoying certainly, but not game breaking.

Let us all inject some fakiness back into our 4E games and bring tripping back to the table.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Full Disclosure: I paid full retail from a local game store for this tile set. I do not receive any benefit from any sales of or links to this product.

Upfront Review for the Impatient: The tile set does support dry/wet erase markers with no issues. Art on the tiles is good, but nothing spectacular. Sadly, the flimsy, paper-like nature of the tiles makes handling them on a game table difficult. Long-term use will require adding some cardboard to the back to make them easier to handle. These factors, combined with a $15.95 price tag for only 16 tiles make this item something to avoid.

Wandering into my FLGS today, I ran across this item and it caught my eye.

I avoided buying any of the WOTC dungeon tile sets because I did not like the fact you cannot write on them. This set claimed that I could write on them with either dry or wet erase pens. $15.95 later, I had my tiles. The set contains 16 tiles of various sizes, each with a different cavern graphic printed on them with a 1-inch tactical grid overlay.

Some assembly is required. Several pages have multiple tiles printed on them and they are not pre-cut. The material used for the tiles is some kind of thin, pliable plastic, backed with a very thin layer of foam. A regular pair of scissors cut it easily and soon I had some cavern hallways.

I tested the tiles with dry and wet erase markers and they worked as advertised. Both types of markers came off easily with little effort. The plastic is very strong and I could not tear or rip it. They are also water-resistant, so the occasional soda spill will not damage them. My issue is not with the tile’s construction, but their usability. First, the non-skid foam backing does not work very well. I tried it on a glass table, wood table and a plastic battle mat and the tiles slide relatively easily. This is a real problem during complex, heated combats with lots of players touching the board causing “player quakes.” Second, the tiles are almost paper thin. They lay so flat that I had issues picking them up and then it usually involved “crumpling” them to find a good grip. The tiles took the abuse fine, but it does make precision handling of the tiles difficult.

These tiles beg for a cardboard backing to raise them off the table for easy handling and to give them some weight to reduce movement during combat. It is an easy task with a little glue and some card stock, but it would be nice if they came with it already done.

While these tiles are a nice idea, the implementation leaves much to be desired. I am sticking with a marker to create my dungeons.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

It does not take a genius to realize this release is all about “4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.” The “Authoring Kit” page even uses 4E as an example of what users can build! The reasoning behind the move is quite sound, WOTC is unlikely to  license the game rules to a company in direct competition with their “D&D Insider” subscription service and Lone Wolf cannot sell the game data for “Herolab” without a license (assuming they want to sign the dreaded GSL before it is revised).

Nothing, however, prevents Lone Wolf from making it easy to add 4E rules to their software package for home use. Well done, Herolab! A little competition might rattle Wizard’s cage and encourage some movement towards a less draconian licensing model.

I have “Herolab,” so I will update it and give a brief report about the authoring kit and its  merits (or defects) this weekend.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Most of it is just a rehash of the previous post regarding features,  but there is some additional information about pricing.

The relevant sections are reprinted below.

What happens to my year-long subscription when the price goes up?

The $4.95 / month price covers Web content only (Dragon and Dungeon Magazines, the D&D Compendium, and the Bonus Tools). We will be charging more for access to the Character Builder, Character Visualizer, Game Table, etc. Our previously announced pricing for the full package (including both Web content and client applications) is $9.95 if you sign up for a full year (going up to $14.95 if you pay one month at a time).

The details of how transitions from one subscription package to another will work will be announced later, but you can safely assume that a) we will honor the terms of the package you signed up for and b) you won’t be charged more unless you choose to pay for more services.

What about free trials of client applications?

We will be making demo versions of the Character Builder and Character Visualizer available so that folks can sample those applications for free. Our plan for the demo version is to have full functionality, but only a small amount of data. So, for example, you might only have access to levels 1 – 3 or you might only be able to build a human. These demo’s will be a permanent fixture of the D&DI website (in other words: the free trial never ends).

How long will the free trial of the Web content last?

At least one more month.

I am still very skeptical of the entire package. I am taking a wait and see approach.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Four Good Reasons to Run Your Game with a Laptop

I felt it my Luddite duty to post counter-arguments to Ben’s post. I strongly advocate a “low-tech” approach to my game. Nothing against those who choose to use technology, but I often find it detracts from the game. Besides, I have a contrary nature and need to play devil’s advocate. ;-)

Here is my list of more than four reasons you should not use a laptop to run your game.

1. Books do not run out of electricity and do not need to sit near a 110-volt outlet.

2. Troubleshooting OS issues during a game is not fun. Internet connectivity issues are also a real drag. Nothing like tweaking MAC filters at a friend’s house to get on the net.

3. Hypertext D20 SRD. I have always felt that rules should be secondary to fun. A database search to get a ruling seems excessive. Let the DM make the call.

4. Online tools–gamers managed to get by with dice and paper for decades. Also see #1 for infrastructure issues this may present. (Please, no hate mail. I love the d20 srd for research, but do not like using it during my game)

5. “Mountain Dew” + “Laptop” = Fire!

6. Table real estate is often at a premium. Laptops eat too much of the table.

7. The cold clatter of dice across a wooden table, coming up “20″ on a life or death roll. No online dice roller can compare.

That said, I have sometimes used technology at my game table. I just was not impressed with the utility in the game. Technology should improve the game, not overwhelm it.

Trask, the Last Tyromancer

“Ode to Disintegrate” by Trask

my enemies die

when green death strikes them

more foes I do desire

Disintegrate, simply put, is the classic spell. Nothing screams “I AM A BADASS CASTER” like turning your enemies into a pile of dust. Although todays lesson focuses on the d20 version of disintegrate, any spell that can vaporize people or items qualifies.

Here is a quick review from the SRD.

A thin, green ray springs from your pointing finger. You must make a successful ranged touch attack to hit. Any creature struck by the ray takes 2d6 points of damage per caster level (to a maximum of 40d6). Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by this spell is entirely disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust. A disintegrated creature’s equipment is unaffected.

When used against an object, the ray simply disintegrates as much as one 10-foot cube of nonliving matter. Thus, the spell disintegrates only part of any very large object or structure targeted. The ray affects even objects constructed entirely of force, such as forceful hand or a wall of force, but not magical effects such as a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field.

A creature or object that makes a successful Fortitude save is partially affected, taking only 5d6 points of damage. If this damage reduces the creature or object to 0 or fewer hit points, it is entirely disintegrated.

Only the first creature or object struck can be affected; that is, the ray affects only one target per casting.

Everyone knows what disintegrate does, but few know how to use it correctly. I speak primarily of target choices.

Common usage involves shooting a low fortitude save NPC with it. Casters are particularly vulnerable to this attack. Problem is that many of them know this and take measures to “beef up” their fortitude save. Using it against a fighter or barbarian is a waste.  At higher levels, they usually only fail on a one. Trask has a far better use for this lovely spell.

Battlefield control.

Stop thinking of disintegrate as an offensive weapon and start thinking of it as a “terrain modifier.” In the SRD, I can think of no other spell that actually lets you remove parts of the battlefield.

Here are some of my personal favorites:

1. Pits are fun

Aim at the  square under a medium fighter. You only need to hit AC 10 to target a specific square.  The fighter recieves no save, since he is not attacked.  Any magical defenses that are active rarely protect the floor at your feet.  The floor, as an unattended item, does not get a save. Four squares of real estate become a 10-foot pit.  I usually give the fighter a reflex save, but some DMs do not. Even if he makes it, charging is impeded. Should the victim fail, he is at the bottom of a 10-foot hole with perfectly smooth walls. The climb check is, oh wait, look what I found under the climb skill.

A perfectly smooth, flat, vertical surface cannot be climbed.

Time to break out that potion of spider climb. You just tied up a fighter for 2 rounds, perhaps more with no save by the victim. Good times.

Bonus Carnage: have a druid create enough water to flood the pit. Nothing says “die” like swimming in full plate!

2. We do not need no stinkin’ door

Magor, the mighty magician locked his room up tight. An indestructible door bars the way. It cannot be picked, knocked or otherwise bypassed. Things look bleak for our heroes.

Until they disintegrate the wall next to the door. Even a magic door needs hinges to stay up.

3. Do you think the building needed that big support pillar in the middle?

Bring the castle down! Sappers dig tunnels under a castle to bring down a wall, you can wave your hand and save some digging.  Fair warning, messing with the underlying structure of a building can get you squashed, but it some cases it can really mess up the bad guys. Collapsing bridges, towers, building and dungeon hallways can be the difference between life and death. Hopefully their death and your ongoing life.

4. Yonder lies the key to open the demon gate! I shall get it before you. Muwahha! —Evil NPC

Unless the DM gives said item “DM protection” just make it go poof. Hard to summon demons with a pile of powder. Remember, no save for unattended items. You can also target equipment on an NPC or a PC. Great for frying spell component bags, for those times you want to take prisoners. As for PC uses, removing ropes, bindings or even soverign glue are good uses, just don’t fire into a grapple! Don’t forget wagon wheels too!

Bonus Carnage: Targeting the rope of someone climbing. It gets a save, but just think of the look on his face if he fails the save.  Not great tactics, but damn entertaining.

I hope that you can see the myriad of uses for disintegrate.  The ability to alter terrain is a powerful and often overlooked use of this spell.  Use it wisely and you will be victorious!

If you any other ideas or think my tactics came from a crackerjack box, feel free to leave a comment.

Trask, the Last Tyromancer