Why Play 3rd Edition?

Over the past 21 years I've spent a lot of time playing Dungeons & Dragons; and of the versions I've explored none has captivated me quite like Third Edition. Where Fifth Edition made the game more accessible, and Fourth made it feel more gamey, Third Edition was the version that taught me to tinker with things. It was the one that said, "If you don't like the rule, change it. That's what all the supplemental books with their countless alternative rule sets were effectively saying. 

The game was a massive beast when Wizards of the Coast (WoC) finally decided to end it and release Fourth Edition. There were over 150 books published throughout the life of the system by WoC that ranged from setting books, like Dragonlance, to adventures and supplemental books that changed the nature of how the game functioned, like Tome of Magic. With all those books as a Dungeon Master (DM), which I was throughout that time, you had to pick out which rules you were going to enforce, which you were going to ignore, and which you were going to modify. 

When I first started playing the rules were more a blanket that I could wrap around myself and use to support my own authority as a DM. I didn't have to be the one responsible for stopping a bad form of play (disruptive nonsense, abusive moves, ect.) - it was the rules. I never had to be the bad guy. 

The thing is, as you grow older you realize that sometimes being in charge means that you have to be the bad guy. You have to be the one responsible for making a decision that others won't like for the betterment of the group as a whole. Yes, within rules the Wizard could feasibly create a chain of villagers to move a rock forward and create a devastating weapon to effectively nuke the Big, Bad, Evil Guy (BBEG) but it wouldn't be fun. It would create a world where the BBEG could do the same thing to the heroes or one where an even more inane and stupid idea could overcome everything and end the game in one massive blah moment. 

That's not what we're here for. 

The game is a vehicle for us to have fun together. You, me, and all the other players at the table. We have to work together to create an environment where we have the most fun. This can be stupid ideas that work, brilliant ideas that fail, and even Total Party Kills (TPKs). 

Third Edition made me realize that the role of the DM is about making decisions that affect how the game is played and it was liberating. I wasn't just referee creating a scenario for play and impartially deciding the outcome of the dice. I was an active participant in the game. 

Fourth Edition, for me, felt like that was taken away. The game was too gamey - by which I mean that the game felt more at home on a board than in us playing with the "Theater of the Mind" as I was more accustomed. I didn't feel confident in such a system with breaking by changing it and ignoring rules that might fundamentally affect the overall experience, as I had been in the older system.  

Fifth Edition brought that fun back for me as I was able to adjust the game once more without feeling like I was doing something that would make it less fun for everyone else. It didn't hurt that I was watching others do that very thing from the day that the first playtest document launched. I loved it - still do, but my son is interested in some more crunchy systems and has asked to play 3rd Edition. 

So we're going to do just that.  

Using Morale in Dungeons & Dragons Without Bringing Dice Into It.

Since I first began running Dungeons & Dragons back in '04 I've had this notion that I like Morale rules in my games. I say notion because I've never actually read what the real Morale rules were in AD&D 2e but my beloved Monster Compendium showed what the morale for monsters were and so I wanted to use the damned thing. Only thing was I didn't have access to an AD&D 2e Dungeon Master Guide so I never actually read a solid explanation for the rule so playing with it was a bit of a hit or miss affair. After a while it simply went missing from my games altogether.

Last night, though, I was reading through a copy of the Sword Lords of the Eastern Regions that was given to me when I read this passage:

". . . USING THE UNIT MORALE CHART: Use this chart when a unit's morale is called for, such as facing up to a Demon. If the roll is missed on one die, the unit must withdraw from the action for one turn at half movement, and then check again. The facing of the unit is up to the player whose unit is affected. If the morale save is made, the unit will obey battle orders . . ." (Becker, 27)

It struck a cord and got me to thinking again about using a Morale Rule in my Dungeons & Dragons game - only this time I'm going to actually look up what the rule meant in AD&D 2e instead of just making it all up on the fly. So let's look at the explanation that David "Zeb" Cook wrote in 1993 edition.

". . . Monsters and NPCs are an entirely different matter . . . The DM makes their decisions, trying to think like each creature or non-player character, in turn. 

In combat, thinking like a creature mainly means deciding what actions it takes and how badly it wants to fight - the morale of the creature. 

As a general rule, monsters and NPCs are no more eager to die than player characters. Most withdraw when a fight starts to go badly. Some panic and flee, even casting their weapons aside. If they think they can get mercy, brighter foes might fall to their knees and surrender. A few bloodthirsty or brainless types might fight to the death - but this doesn't happen too often. These are the things that make up morale, things the DM must decide, either through role-playing or dice rolling . . ." (Cook, 69)

I really wish that I had read this passage from the AD&D 2e Dungeon Master Guide years ago because the line ". . . most withdraw when a fight starts to go badly . . ." is something that I could have used earlier to dramatically improve my games. Even with my bastardized morale rule too often I found myself pushing the monsters to stay in the fight until every last one of them had fought to the death. While that can be interesting on occasion having monsters run from the players can create its own sort of drama as the players can gain a real reputation in the world that feels more authentic.

Jeff Easley title unkown

It's also interesting that with the morale rule it seems that there are degrees of failure for the monsters and non-player characters that your players encounter in the world. Are there degrees of success as well?

Zeb continues:

". . . The first (and best) way to handle morale is to determine it without rolling any dice or consulting any tables. This gives the biggest range of choices an prevents illogical things from happening . . . To decide what a creature does, think about its goals and reasons for fighting . . ." (Cook, 69)

As I've been reading more of AD&D 2e in recent weeks I've noticed that there is a decided trend among the writers that as a Dungeon Master you should think about your monsters' and non-player characters' motivations behind what they're doing. This aspect of the game wasn't missing from my beloved D&D 3.5e but it wasn't as pronounced and as a result for a long time I didn't consider such things. Instead I tended to look at the Challenge Rating chart and pick monsters to throw at my players based on what lined up with their level. That was a mistake and it made my game less interesting as a result.

With that in mind let's talk about unintelligent creatures for a minute. Zeb writes:

". . . Unintelligent and animal intelligence creatures attack, most often for food or to protect their lairs. Few ever attack for the sheer joy of killing . . . A mountain lion, for example, doesn't hunt humans (as a rule) and doesn't stalk and attack humans as it would a deer . . . Such creatures normally allow a party of adventurers to pass by unhindered, without even revealing themselves. Only when the creature is close to the lair does the chance of attack increase . . . When they do become involved in combat, animals and other creatures rarely fight to the death . . . Their interest is in food . . ." (Cook, 69)

I find it interesting that while I have often had trouble remembering to get monsters to flee I almost never experience the same issue with wild animals. The difference tends to be that I am around animals both wild and domestic regularly so I've internalized their habits; while monsters, to my mind, tend to be nothing more than imaginary creatures bent on destroying the civilized world of man and demi-human alike. Even though I know what the monsters are doing in my game world and why they're doing it, it's rare that I've treated my monstrous encounters with the sort of complicated motivations that they deserve. Reading Cook's discussion of morale I can't help but feel he would be slightly disappointed in my handling of the monsters.

". . . Intelligent Creatures have more complicated motivations than the need for food and shelter . . . Greed, hatred, fear, self-defense, and hunger are all motivations, but they are not all worth dying for . . . As a guideline for intelligent creature and NPC motivation, consider the actions of the player characters. How often do they fight to the death? Why would they? At what point do they usually retreat . . ." (Cook, 69)

And here comes a point where I begin to understand why I might have simplified monsters' motivations. My players almost never retreat. Not once in the 13 years that I've been running have I had a group that fell back (though I have been a part of two groups who fell back as a player). Typically my players fight to the death every time the enter into an encounter. This begs the question, though: do they determine their notion on how to handle a fight from the way that my monsters interact with them, or do I take my lead from them?

I think that I will have to put Zeb's ideas into action to tell.

More later.


Works Cited
Becker, Michael, Keith Elliott an Wilfredo Aguilar. Sword Lords of the Eastern Regions. Archive Miniatures & Game Systems. 1981. Print. pg 27

Cook, David "Zeb." Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master Guide. Random House. USA, 1993. pg 69 - 72,

Don't Make People Roll for a DC 10 or Less Checks, You Dicks.

A check with a Difficulty Class (DC) of 10 or less is not something that you should be making your players roll. The DC 10 represents an activity that is done regularly that poses no real challenge to your average person conducted under normal circumstances. A DC that is set at less than 10 represents something that an average person could do with little to no trouble, like changing the channel on the remote or picking up a glass of coke.  

Now I know that to some of my regular readers that this probably shouldn't have needed addressing but you would be amazed at how many comments I've read today while I was researching wilderness survival where people kept championing the "Roll every DC, no matter how low," line of thought. And I get it, they've got no one who will play in their boring ass games so they want us to have the same experience. 

Don't make people roll for things they should automatically succeed at doing. It slows down the game. It makes you a boring, unimaginative Dungeon Master. Forget that noise and keep the game moving.

Lawfully Stupid While Walking into the Dungeon

The inclusion and use of alignments in defining how our characters are supposed to act is one of those great issues in the role-playing enthusiasts community. There are countless posts on blogs and forums where people are vehemently arguing about how to properly play a given alignment and how others are doing it wrong. More often than not it seems like most of these discussions are really just people arguing against things they don't like in their home games and have projected onto these alignments as a result.

I recently ran across this very phenomenon when I went over to the Lifetime Loser Lounge. A friend of mine had invited three teenage players into his game. The three players decided to play characters with different alignments. The first decides to play Lawful Evil, the second elects to become Lawful Neutral, and the third chooses to become Lawful Good. The trio then send their characters into the dungeon where the Good and Evil player begin to push themselves to the extremes of their alignments which soon sends them into exasperated fits with each other. Their bickering gets so bad that the Neutral player finally shouts, "God, I'm so tired of playing with the Lawful Stupid!" Now, none of them are talking to each other but they're telling anyone who will listen about why the other players' alignment choice is the reason why the game fell apart. As one of the young ladies playing told me, "Playing my alignment correctly is what broke the game and it's why I fucking hate alignments to begin with!"

After listening to her describe what happened in the game I'm fairly certain that the actual problem isn't that she was playing her alignment correctly, or that anyone else was playing it incorrectly, but rather that the Good and Evil players were pushing their characters to act in a way that their mental caricatures of how those alignments would act. To put it another way, they wanted the "Good" or "Evil" descriptor of their alignment to stand out so they pushed their characters to act in a way that left no room for question about where they stood on that spectrum. They left themselves no room for common ground because they allowed themselves to be fooled into believing that their alignments dictated their actions.

That isn't how role-playing games are supposed to work.

Alignments aren't supposed to be the thing that dictates how you play; rather they're supposed to inform how you play. That's a complicated way of saying that an alignment is there to help you pick which choice you want your character to make and not to force you to make that choice. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of players treat their alignments as this constrictive thing that will force their character to make a set choice every time and it causes them to forget that role-playing games aren't choose-your-own-adventures. We have the freedom to chose what our characters care about and what gets under their skin and what the repercussions for such things have for our characters.

Unless we're playing Cavilers. Then we must fight, and fight, and fight until we die.

Larry Elmore, title unknown

It's A False Argument but Batman Running Through the Streets Should Make Up for It.

Last night I was catching up on some of the Black Gate archives I've missed when I ran across an article by Bob Byrne, Why I Went Old School - or Swords & Wizardry vs Pathfinder, that kind of got my attention. In the article Byrne discusses the reasons why he went with Swords & Wizardry over Pathfinder by trotting out many of the same arguments that you'll see time, and time again, whenever the discussion gets brought up online. But the one that got my attention was this one:

". . . I used this when explaining S&W to one of my new players. Now, in Baldur’s Gate, he would click on the ‘Find Traps’ skill and if a trap was nearby, it would be outlined on screen in a red box if detected. And he is aware that in a modern game (like Pathfinder), you would roll a 20-sided dice against your Find Trap skill. 

But I explained it won’t work that way in S&W. After I described the environment, he would have to tell me how he goes about looking for traps. Does he examine the ceiling? Does he roll a round stone across the floor? Does he put his fingers in the mouth of the idol (always a dangerous move!)?  

To try and bluff your way past the guard at the city gate, you don’t simply roll against your Bluff skill. You have to tell the same story to the Referee that your character is telling to the guard. With appropriate gestures . . .  

The Referee may simply determine whether it worked or not. Or if the try was plausible, they may roll a dice against the character’s Charisma score, with a bonus or penalty, depending on how good the story was. So, even though there is a version of a skill check involved, it’s driven by the player action, not the character sheet . . ." (Byrne)

Since I first became aware of the Old School movement I have always been bothered by the argument that rule heavy systems, like Dungeons & Dragons 3e and its kin, force the players to play the game through their die rolls and character sheets rather than to take control of the action through the use of their own creativity and narrative choices. At its core this argument is one that would have you believe that providing players who might not be as creative with a way to accomplish their goals and to participate in the game in a meaningful way, such as through the use of skill checks, eliminates the possibility for them to play in any other way - which is bullshit. 

Players did not suddenly cede their right to make a meaningful narrative choice, or use their creativity to deal with a problem in the game, simply because they elected to play a game that provided them with a skill check to accomplish the task without having to detail every action they might make in the attempt. Things like skill checks were not designed to eliminate the player's ability to think outside the box but rather to allow them the opportunity to accomplish actions which they might not have the natural skill or knowledge to otherwise attempt. They are an aide to play; not a hindrance binding play behind a massive block of rules. 

Now back to my book.

Works Cited
Byrne, Bob. "Why I Went Old School - or Swords & Wizardry vs Pathfinder" Black Gate. https://www.blackgate.com/2016/09/08/why-i-went-old-school-or-swords-wizardry-vs-pathfinder/ Accessed December 15, 2016

The Great RPG Transition

At Gen Con this year Critical Role, a web-show that features a talented group of voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons, filled a 1,500 capacity auditorium. The enthusiastic crowd prompted Morrus over at EN World to discuss the effect celebrity players have on the role-playing game industry as a whole.

Without a doubt we are seeing the rise of celebrity players. For several years now we've been seeing people slowly becoming known for how they play role-playing games through podcasts, web shows, and the like; but in doing so we've also missed a critical aspect of what such things have been doing for us as a whole. Mike Mearls, Lead Designer of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, put it a little bit of an interesting spin on the whole thing:

". . . It’s interesting seeing reactions at GenCon to Critical Role’s show in Indy. Illustrates a big divide in how designers grok TRPGs these days (source). It’ll be great to see a higher level of awareness of how RPGs have transformed and what that means for their future (source) 

I believe that the rise of 3/3.5e and online discussion forums created a massive, fundamental shift in how RPGs were viewed and used (source). 3e, and then into 4e, D&D was very dense, rules heavy, complicated, and filled with character building options. That was the game (source). That spread to other RPGs, placing the baseline complexity of the typical RPG at the extreme upper end of what we saw in 80s/90s (source). At the same time, online discussion veered heavily towards character optimization and rules details. It was a culture of read and dissect (source).  

Both the indie and old school design movements rose in counter to this, focusing much more heavily on actual play at the table (source). However, the prevailing, forum-based online culture made it very hard to communicate meaningfully about actual play (source). That changed when streaming and actual play vids became accessible to the average DM. The culture of actual play had a platform (source).  

We can now meaningfully interact based on what we’re doing when we play, rather than talk about the stuff we do when we don’t play (source). This is HUGE because it shifts the design . . . [conversation] away from “How do we design for forum discussions?” to “How do we design for play?” (source) 

As game designers, we can actually watch how RPGs play and what rules and concepts facilitate the effects we’re looking to create (source).  

The tension between theoretical discussion vs actual play has always been a big part of RPG design (source). I believe at the table ruled for a very long time, swung hard to theory, and now back to table-driven design (source). Theory is useful, but it has to be used in service to actual, repeatable results in play. And I say this as someone who veered to theory (source).  

So in a series of 14 tweets, that’s why I see Critical Role at GenCon something that can be very good for the hobby and designers (source).  

Addendum: This ties into the huge success of 5e and the growth of RPGs – people can now learn by watching. The rulebook is not a barrier (source). We don’t learn sports like baseball or soccer by reading the rules – we watch and quickly learn how to play (source). The rulebook is a reference, like the NBA’s rulebook. Comes out only when absolutely needed. Barriers are now gone. Design accordingly . . . (source)"

By and large Mike knocks this one out of the park. D&D 3e and D&D 4e were both cumbersome in the sheer volume of rules, and rule variants, they presented - and that's spoken as someone who loves Third Edition - to the point where it became a challenge just to learn enough of the rules to begin play. Fifth Edition, and to a large extent most modern role-playing games, have moved in the opposite direction going towards a play centered focus where rules not only can be hand-waved when they get in the way of actual play but where it's actually encouraged by the designers to do so. After drowning in the sea of rules Third Edition dropped on us it's like a breath of fresh air.

More later.

The D&D Guidebook, 3rd Edition Part 3: Styles of Play

There is an old argument against the Dungeons & Dragons that goes like this: "D&D is a game built around the idea that the players should largely engage in combative behavior without worrying about the 'story' of the session or campaign. The game emphasizes combat by rewarding players only for killing monsters and looting treasure, and not for accomplishing important moments for the character in the context of the game's larger story. Therefore it is not a game that anyone concerned with the idea that the world is more meaningful than the next walking experience point waiting to be felled should spend any time playing."

When 3e was published the argument became louder with many of its proponents posting on a wide array of forums decrying the way that this newly popular version of the game was being played. Too often, for them it seems, D&D players were gleefully killing Orcs, Dragons, and Trolls and too rarely talking about how the death of the Duke's daughter affected their character's emotional well-being. The 'murder-hobos' were decried for their lack of imagination and 3e was pointed to as the source of this murderous non-sense. "The game," they reasoned, "did not reward true creativity and only indulged in the baser instincts of its players - never challenging their moral understanding of the world."

They are, of course, full of shit.

D&D is a robust game that allows for a wide array of play styles from the aggressive play of the most notorious, bloodthirsty player to the deeply immersive explorations of what it means for a character to navigate the political intrigues of the free cities of Dyvers and Greyhawk. D&D is a game that reflects the play style of the group playing the game - Dungeon Master and players alike. If your group is looking to go from dungeon crawl to dungeon crawl spending as little time playing out their characters' time away from that exploration than that's something that D&D can provide you through monstrous encounters, deadly traps, and vile malefactors in every wild space of the campaign world. By the same token if the group wants to spend weeks dallying with Dukes and petty nobles of various houses, exploring the political intrigues associated with them and pitting each against the other for the players' benefit, than D&D, and especially 3e, can accomplish that with ease.

While Dungeons & Dragons is a game that can provide players with an experience that focuses on either end of the spectrum (murderous vagrants or political dilettantes), it works best somewhere between each spectrum. In the Dungeon Master's Guide it was put this way:

". . . Most campaigns are going to fall between these two extremes. There's plenty of action, but there's a storyline and interaction as characters too. Players will develop their characters, but they'll be eager to get into a fight as well. Provide a nice mixture of roleplaying encounters and combat encounters. Even in a dungeon you can present NPCs that aren't meant to be fought but rather helped out, negotiated with, or just talked to . . ." (Cook, 8)

Reading that paragraph again for the first time in a few years I find myself remembering how I was sitting at my desk plotting out Duke Niles's motivations when I picked up the DMG and read that paragraph. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and suddenly I stopped worrying about every possible plot hook and instead concerned myself with focusing on what my players wanted when they played. I started listening to what they were talking about - the next fight, what would happen to the little girl if they didn't figure out what was going on, whether they could stop everything from collapsing in on itself and save the world - and began attempting to provide them with an opportunity to find out.

In the eleven years I've been running D&D since I've had games that ran the gamut from deeply immersive experiences to murderous rampages where no ogre was left alive and the game has always provided me with a framework to experience the game we had been looking to play (which isn't to say that I've never played other games or that they didn't provide me enjoyable experiences as well). During the majority of that time I've played a lot of 3e and enjoyed the hell out of it; which is why I decided to start this series for the D&D Guidebook with 3e.

Works Cited

Cook, Monte. Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, Core Rulebook II. Wizards of the Coast. USA, 2000. PRINT. pg. 8

Buy the Books Mentioned in this Post

The D&D Guidebook, 3rd Edition Part 2: Let’s Talk About All That Funny Math

Shortly after you open the 3e Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) you’ll find a little section titled General Guidelines. It’s here that the mathematics that you’ve grown up with are going to begin abandoning you and it’s here that our exploration of 3e really beings.

Rounding Fractions

In 3e you’re going to encounter fractions and like when you were in elementary school these fractions are always to be rounded to the nearest whole number. Only unlike the math you learned alongside your letters and what it means when a pretty girl slides you a note asking if you want to be her boyfriend in Third Edition there is no artificial demarcation line drawn at 1/2. Everything rounds down to the lowest number – except for when it doesn’t. Certain types of damage, hit points, and on a few other occasions it isn’t possible for the math to give you a result lower than one.

Congratulations, we’ve just run into our first exception of the game and we’re only on page six of the 3e DMG. Get ready because there are going to be a lot more.

Multiplying

So let’s talk about how you multiply in 3e because this is going to come up eventually in any game you play. Now normally multiplication works as it always has when you have a single multiplier. For example, if you make a critical hit (the best result in combat) then your weapon damage is multiplied by its critical modifier as always (the numbers here for new players are going to look a bit crazy but don’t worry about them right now as this is just putting a little bug in your ear so that you will remember it later). Let’s say that your fighter is swinging a war-hammer which has a X3 critical modifier. When you roll that critical you multiply your normal damage as follows:

3(1d8+6) = 3(1d8) + 3(6) = 3d8 + 18

Pretty standard stuff, right?

Now where things get weird is when you have an additional multiplier to factor into the equation for combat.  Let’s say that you have a special magical effect that happens when you fight a particular enemy that multiplies your damage by two every time you attack that creature with your war-hammer, and on this particular occasion you score a critical. How would you imagine that you would combine those two multipliers? For some of you it would be obvious that you should follow the order of operations. First you would resolve the doubling of the damage, since it happens every time you attack that enemy, and then applying the triple for the critical to arrive at a result similar to this:

3[2(1d8+6)] = 3[2(1d8) + 2(6)] = 3[2d8 + 12] = 3(2d8) + 3(12) = 6d8 + 36

Not so fast my friend. In 3e you combine the multipliers through an addition of a subtraction. Sound odd?

It is.

When you have two multipliers in combat you’re supposed to take one away from the lesser of the two multipliers and add the results. Let’s again consider our magical war-hammer and the critical strike. 3e would like us to combine the 3 multiplier and the 2 multiplier, minus one. This results in a multiplier of 4. To put it in a mathematical formula:

((3 + 2) – 1)(1d8 + 6) = (5 – 1)(1d8 + 6) = 4(1d8 + 6) = 4(1d8) + 4(6) = 4d8 + 24

In the revision of 3e, lovingly referred to as three-five, this would be explained as follows:

“. . . Another way to think of it is to convert the multiplication into additions. Tordek’s critical hit increases his damage by 2d8 + 12, and the dwarven thrower’s doubling of damage increases his damage by 1d8 + 6, so both of them together increase his damage by 3d8 + 18 for a grand total of 4d8 + 24 . . .” (Tweet, 304)

Over the years I’ve played Third Edition using both systems of math, that found in the real world and that found in 3e, and honestly, the game plays better when you use the 3e method. Oh, it’s a strange math all right, but the game is more challenging and exciting when you use it.

Before we close up this section of the Guidebook I should note that at the time 3e was first published the multiple multiplier rule was confusingly written and implied that this sort of math should be applied to all situations where multiple multipliers were in play. This would be cleared up in the revision of the game to show that only combat modifiers as described above should be handled in this way. All other similar situations should be handled like the rest of the world deals with all math: in a standard order of operations, with a calculator, and avoided whenever possible.

Works Cited:

Tweet, Johnathan. Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, Core Rulebook I v.3.5. USA: Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2003. Print. 304