Galactic Keep

Looks awesome.

Why have they not done this with 4e?

In fact, screw 4e.  I want to see this game with blue-map era megadungeons, using the blue-map cartography and red-box D&D rules.  I want APP ON THE BORDERLANDS!  I want SECRET APP OF BONE HILL.  I want RUINS OF APPMOUNTAIN.  I want CASTLE GREYAPP!

Seriously, why can I not play turn-based party dungeon-crawlers with D&D rules and awesome graphics like this RIGHT NOW?

If you know of any, put them in the comments.  Please bear in mind that I cannot afford cocaine or Apple products.  Derek Proud of Dungeon Mapp - are you taking notes?

Incidentally, one day left on the draw to win a free copy of Dungeon Mapp for the iPad.  Send me an email at kootenaymurph at gmail dot com if you want in!

A Great Tool for the Busy DM

StumbleUpon.  You kill me - I should be doing other STUFF.  I have Domain Game turns to work on, prep for my online After The Bomb game, work stuff that I really shouldn't be doing at home.  But yet I click, and click and click.

But.  But, but, but - the clicking finally pays off!  I found this little gem, by Wizards of the Coast, no less.  I haven't really looked at the adventure portion yet, but the little maps it creates are GREAT.  For small post-apocalyptic complexes and buildings, these maps look ideal.

In addition, I can save them right off the website and import them into Maptools with a few mouse clicks.  Super work, WotC, really super.

The Wargame DNA of the RPG

A few years ago, I helped out a family friend, Craig Besinque, in designing and playtesting a block-based wargames, which ended up being called Hellenes: Campaigns of the Ancient World.

Craig is pretty well-know in a certain element of the wargaming community - which is like being well-known in the RPG community, except that wargamers tend to be a bit more community-oriented than most RPGer's.  He's designed games like WestFront and EastFront for Columbia Games, so it was really interesting to learn about board game/wargame design from him.

In brief, here are the things I learned working with Craig.

1) Designing wargames is unlikely to make you rich.  You are working in a niche market, with a fairly small customer base (as customer bases go).  They are a reliable base, though - willing to spend money on quality product.  This is presumably also true for RPG's - something anyone wanting to design RPG's should heed.

2) You had best be good at math.  Craig has a Masters Degree in Mathematics from (I believe) UCLA.  He can do fairly complex probability in his head.  I suspect that it's a good thing he's not into gambling, or he would be cleaning up on Pokerstars.net.

3) Game balance is all-important.  Moreso in this context than some others, since Hellenes was designed to be a fairly short 1v1 wargame.  Balance in this context is very similar to what balance means in chess - there should be no sure, or even preferred, route to victory.  If there is, the game is "broken" and considered by most people to be unworthy of being played.  Which will kill your sales (or even your chances of being published) - see point 1.

4) You can design whatever you want, but if you stick to certain material constraints, there is a much better chance that your game will be published.  In this case, Columbia games had certain pre-packaged numbers of blocks and decks of cards.  If you used a different number of blocks in your game, it meant the game cost more, which would be a factor in the publisher deciding to release it.  Likewise, if you use cards, try to stick with the same number of cards as a standard deck of cards, for the same reasons.

To further explain this point, we should examine a different game - Railroad Tycoon.  This game has a ton of different blocks, tiles, markers, plastic trains and whatnot with it.  It's a pretty good game, but now out of print.  I think that's probably because all the bells and whistles (hehe) cost more that it's worth to produce the thing.

5) You must playtest.  Then, playtest more.  Then put it out there and get others to playtest it.  That is the only way to get good game balance - see point 3.

6) If you want to design a historical boardgame, you must start with the historical part.

It's nice if the game can reflect historical realities, but you should pick what realities you reflect - they should be ones that create interesting possibilities and trade-offs.  Guns or butter decisions are what make wargames interesting.

Ideally, players should be making decisions that reflect those that the actual historical sides would have made - in the case of Hellenes, the Athenians need to decide how much of their fleet to take out of the city, whether to focus on attacking Spartan coastal provinces, how much effort to spend putting down revolts, and how many resources to apply to land armies vs the fleet.

7) Limiting resources is a good thing.  When you can't do everything, you have to make decisions about where to allocate a very limited pool of resources.  This makes each decision a difficult one, requiring much deliberation.  Combined with point 6 - it means you can never do everything you want, and you're always making interesting decisions about what you can do.

Many RPG's use one or more of these design principles.  Interestingly, older versions of games like D&D tend to use less of them, despite the fact that they are closer, genetically-speaking to those old wargames.  Specifically issues like game balance, playtesting and limiting resources don't seem to have been foremost in the minds of the designers of say, 1e Dungeons and Dragons.  It's a hybrid game system, and the designers seem to be focused more on the overall experience than applying the lessons of wargame design to the new system.

In more recent years, things have swung back around.  4e, for all it's flaws, pays much more attention to 2, 3 and 7.  It would have been nice if they spent more time on 5, though.  Curiously, it's frequently panned by fans of the older editions - which is kinda weird, since it owes much more to the initial inspiration for D&D than many of those old editions did.

Ultimately, helping to design a boardgame was a great experience - it's really changed how I look at both RPG's and computer games.  I feel like I have a much better view of the decisions that were probably made in the design phase that resulted in the game I'm playing, which makes it easier to mod games, and strangely, easier to like each system for it's own merits/flaws.  To understand something is to lose the fear of it, after all.

4e and AD&D - The Best Comparison

I was browsing through RPG Blogs today, and I came across this little gem.

The best part of this article is a single line: It’s like modern (i.e. 4th edition)  D&D is software, while the first edition of AD&D was tax code, becoming more byzantine the longer it existed.

So that makes Basic D&D what, programming instructions for a VCR, translated poorly from Japanese?

I jest, but only a little.  4e really is software, though.  As a software tester/seller, I can tell you that for certain.  And many of the issues that people have with it are issues that apply to complex software, as well.  The biggest being "The Errata Issue".

Because of DDI and digital distribution, WotC has the technological capability to quickly and comprehensively update their "software" in a way that has never, ever been possible for an RPG publisher.  Indeed, in my old online 4e campaign, there were no paper character sheets.  In fact, no paper was used in the making of the entire game, except a few pages from my notebook when doing adventure planning.

I was aware of the fact that errata was coming out, but it rarely had any kind of impact on me.  As a DM, I rely on my players to inform me of the capabilities of their characters. I do random "drug testing" just to make sure that things aren't being abused or misunderstood, but really, why bother to learn everything about every class?  I didn't do it when I DM'ed 2e, or Vampire, or Warhammer.  So the inclusion of the errata doesn't really make a difference to me, one way or the other.


But many people don't use the DDi tools, and don't do the digital thang.  So we also have all these paper copies of the "software" floating around.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that the analogy is slightly off.  4e is like software + manual.  AD&D is straight manual.


Before I continue, let me tell you a bit about the company I work for.  We make specialized database/management software for Fire Departments.  We update our software frequently (once a week or so) and our software manual is about 5,000 pages long.  I shit you not - it's 2 massive 3-ring binders, completely stuffed full.  It's modular software, so nobody uses everything, but somebody uses every part of it.


In terms of market share, we are probably Palladium - kinda niche market, but popular enough.  But we have a system set up that is almost EXACTLY like what WotC has going with 4e.  Many people use the program, some keep it updated, some do not.  Some use the hard-copy manual, some do not, and rely on the digital manual.  So I have much experience regarding the issue of Errata.  


Therefore, complainers about errata, listen closely and learn exactly why WotC releases so much errata:


1) It costs them very little to do so.  With digital distribution, once you have the infrastructure, the cost of updating is negligible.  A little writer/programmer time, and you're done.


2) Some people want bugs fixed.  This should be obvious, but somehow, on the issue of errata, it isn't.  Just because you don't use the "Jaws of the Wolf" power or whatever, doesn't mean that somebody doesn't want it fixed up.  And lets be clear - if something is broken and isn't fixed, it can be a real problem to the people that use it.


3) Users are not required to install all updates.  If you are happy with how the system is running, you don't have to install the updates.  Sure, you might get some new little features with them, but it's not necessary.


4) You can also keep the printed manual up-to-date, if you want to spend the time.  Personally, I think it's a waste of time/money when you can refer to the digital document, but that's just me - you can if you want to, but it's in no way a requirement.


5) It's dirt cheap for users to get the updates.  Hell, I tend to subscribe to DDi for 1 month every year or so.  I update Character Builder (and I can update it 6 times - so my group updates their character builders), I update the monster builder, I dump Compendium into Masterplan.  I just got 1 year of content for what, $12?


So, if you don't like the errata, or all the changes that WotC make to 4e, give your head a shake and think the following:


I don't have get the update if I don't feel I need it.


If I do feel I need it, it's cheap and easy to get.


If I must have the hard-copy update, it's a bit of a pain, but doable.  It wasn't really even an option in earlier versions.


None of this stuff was ever an option before - the fact that it is now is of great benefit to users.  It's a living, active, supported piece of gaming software.  If it's not your cup of tea, fine - but don't bitch about it being a cash-grab - the 3e model was much, much worse - just print more books - all hard-copy manual, all the time.

The Myth of Causality

*Reposted from my comment on Whitehall Paraindustries*

A post I read recently on causality got me thinking about the "direction of causality" issue in gaming. I think that a lot of this discussion and disagreement comes down to people misunderstanding what the purpose of the "rules" in games actually do.

When we really boil down what game rules are for, it's very simple:

Something might happen in the narrative and you determine how likely/unlikely that is to happen. 

Factors that are commonly considered are the difficulty of the action and the skill of the people involved. Add randomization, and voila - you have determined an action.

Pretty much every game rule, in all systems addresses some part of this basic equation. Rules are just shortcuts to these basic questions, and different rules address or combine these questions in different ways.

As an example, lets look at AC (or any defense rating, really). It's a shortcut for "how difficult it is to attack something", and the shortcut includes factors like physical protection and agility and overall skill of the defender. 

Attack modifiers are similar - they are a shortcut that say "this is how good I am at striking aggressively".

Different systems use different shortcuts and probability structures to organize this stuff, but the basics are always the same.

It seems to me that the whole concept of "direction of causality" is mistaken - the only causality that exists is the consensual one that the players agree to. Different styles and rulesets imply causality, but they cannot create it.

Maybe an example will help, if only for myself. Let's take one action and look at the different ways that it can be handled, using different shortcuts. In game, a player says "I try to knock the monster into the pit".

You need to determine how difficult this is going to be - factoring in how tough the monster is to knock around, how skilled the player is at knocking things around, adding some randomization (if you like) and then determining the actual in-game effects.

For OD&D, this process is going to be largely up to the GM, with input from the players, and will be primarily based on AC, to hit bonus and a generous helping of "common sense", which really means deciding what you think might be realistic and then arguing about it. This is because OD&D doesn't use a lot of shortcuts.

In 4e, there are more shortcuts built into the game system. Rule of 42 gives mechanical guidelines for determining how difficult things are generally, and the player may have a power like "Tide of Iron", which is just a shortcut for saying "this character is hella-good at smashing things around by running at them".

The difficulty here is that the shortcuts are implying possibility - things like the rogue power that hits as a close burst on multiple targets, and can be done with a crossbow. Now... I've used a crossbow, brother, and there ain't no bursts with em. The power is a shortcut for saying "this character is really good at shooting a bunch of people in the face with missile weapons", but it asks you to agree that the possibility is there in the first place - which is where people who like OD&D have issues with 4e, it uses shortcuts that imply possibilities that they would rather not have.

I like 4e because it's made the mechanics of determining lots of this stuff more transparent and easier to use, but you need to be willing to use the shortcuts they built as well, and those don't sit well with everyone.

Writing an Adventure, 4e-style

One of the things that I like best about 4th Edition DnD is how easy it makes the adventure creation process.  I can honestly say that in 20 years of role-playing, I've never come across a system that makes the raw numbers of encounter creation so accessible and user-friendly.

This means a lot to me, since I'm a DM.  I really like that the guessing game of "too strong or too weak" is gone the way of THAC0.  The ability to quickly calibrate the difficulty of an encounter give me a lot more time to work on the cool stuff - creating interesting encounter locations, memorable NPC's, interesting lore and great story. 

In this series of posts, I'm going to go over my process for creating an adventure for a group of 4-5 1st level PCs, taking them to second level.  Ideally, this will help novice or inexperienced DM's with the mechanics of adventure creation, as well as giving everyone else some neat campaign idea.  I'll try to post encounter maps and stat blocks for everything. If people want to use the adventure, please feel free.

Step 1: Inspiration

The inspiration for this adventure came from a very vivid image I had in my head of a tower on a steep cliff with a cresent-moon shaped roof.  The tower is set on a ridge, with a cliff behind it.  The ridge is wooded, and at the bottom of the ridge a sheer chasm falls away.  At the edge of the chasm is a bridge, with a small keep made up of two small round towers guarding one end.

One of the characters in the game is a priestess of Sehanine, the elven goddess of night and the moon, so I decided that the tower was a place holy to Sehanine - not a temple, though.  It's a monastery, where a seer of the goddess lives.  I decided to call it the Sanctuary of the Waning Moon.

Step 2: Antagonists

I'm going to crib the basic idea for the villain of this piece from the second book of Peter Morwood's amazing series about Aldric Talvalin, called The Demon Lord.  The entire series is 4 books, the Horse Lord, the Demon Lord, the Dragon Lord and The Warlord's Domain.  If you can find them, they're a great series.  The antagonist here is a demon-god, called Ithaqua - previously a god of harvest and growth, the disappearance of its worshippers has caused it to degenerate into a demon representing rot, blight and corruption.  I'm not going to put the PC's up against the demon here, just have them investigate a symptom of it's corrupting influence - in this case, a seer of Sehanine who has been possessed and driven mad.

Since Sehanine is an elven goddess, and the demon is a nature-related one, I'm going to have links to the Feywild scattered throughout the early adventures, with the idea that the PC's will eventually have to go there to stop the demon, ideally at around 10th level, but that's further down the road.

So the basic plan here is to have the PC's sent to investigate the Sanctuary of the Waning Moon, to find out why the seeress there has not communicated with the regional temple in some time.