DYVERS

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Inspiration for Saturday's Game

When it comes to stretching out the mental muscles I often find it important to put some music on. Now I don't use music when I'm actually running a game of Dungeons and Dragons but the music that I listen to when I'm getting ready to run a game often helps me get into the right frame of reference. With that in mind I present to you Saturday's Game:

The game will open up with an attack from a quarter they're not expecting and an enemy they've forgotten about will be revealed to still be alive in spite of their best efforts.

Questions abound and they try to make sense of it all.

A murderess is brought to the fore. She holds the answers to all their questions but the price is high, perhaps higher than they're willing to pay.

The heroes have to rally before the forgotten terror comes to grips with them. Hell awaits failure and only pain awaits success.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

This Dude Just Ruined Proposing for Us All

The video below is one of the coolest, most inventive proposals I have ever seen. I'm posting it here because this is the sort of thing that just makes you think, why aren't my friends cool enough to help me with that sort of thing. What have I done with my life?

Ugh . . .

This evening I was catching up on some reading when I got redirected to The Designer Monologues by Gareth-Michael Skarka and his blog post, When Nazis Get Rapey. I would love to tell you that this post was a funny little thing in the vein of Mel Brooks' the Producers where the author is self aware enough to understand that humor can be found in any subject and attempts to prove the point. Unfortunately this is not the case. When Nazis Get Rapey is a mind numbing attempt by Gareth-Michael Skarka to prop himself up as this heroic figure fighting back against the tide of misogyny and sexist attitudes that snake their way into our hobby and threaten to take us all to hell. According to Gareth-Michael Skarka:

. . . [The] Belle and Blade . . . is a fairly notorious vendor at GenCon. Officially, they focus on “military interest DVDs” — the booth is filled with copies of The Longest Day, Midway, Saving Private Ryan, The Four Feathers, Zulu, that kind of thing. Of course, if you look a bit closer, you’ll also find such gems as Ilsa, She-Devil of the SS, Red Nights of the Gestapo and Stalag Bitch. The Nazi fetishism continues on the inside of the booth, where you can find Triumph of the Will and T-Shirts emblazoned with each of the SS Division insignias, “Afrika Korps World Tour”, and other such gems. They’ve been an embarrassment to the industry for the years they’ve been exhibiting, but, depressingly, it seems a not-insigifiant part of the gamer audience actually gets into that kind of shit . . . So I was not surprised when Valerie Laproye of French games publisher 7ieme Cercle was upset on Thursday night, telling me of the Nazi crap she’d seen in the dealer’s hall.

Then she mentioned the panties . . . (When Nazis Get Rapey)

Now before we really start into the crux of his argument I want to point out that Gareth-Michael Skarka already has a problem with the company Belle and Blade before his issue with the panties - a phrase I never thought that I would write, so good on ya Gareth - and that it seems as though he is predisposed to disliking anything that the company will do at Gen Con or any other convention for that matter. I agree with him that the Nazi stuff is the shits but panties . . .

. . . I was used to the Nazi-fetish bullshit carried by Belle & Blade, so I was surprised when Valerie listed women’s underwear in the litany of the booth’s product — She said they were carrying black underwear, hung at child-height on the outside of the booth, emblazoned with slogans like “I COULD USE A LITTLE SEXUAL HARASSMENT.” She was quite upset by this — and I was as well. I had thought that admiration of the Nazis was as low as this exhibitor could go. I was wrong. The next morning, I swung by their booth (1622) before the hall opened, and snapped a couple of pictures . . . (When Nazis Get Rapey)

I will never understand the Nazi fetish that some people fall into. I mean of all the things to get all gooey about Nazism is just plain ignorance gone to seed. To me it's akin to the Ku Klux Klan fetish that you occasionally see from those wack-a-doodles flying Confederate flags on the side of the highway. Yeah, I get it you don't like black people because they're different and different is wrong; and you Nazis don't like anything different from you because different is wrong and scary and it makes you uncomfortable in your pants.

Shut your face and grow up son.

Anyway, Gareth-Michael Skarka posted some pictures of the panties that he found so offensive that it trumped the Nazi fetishism that had previously pissed him off so profoundly. Now you can go to his blog and see the fuzzy, out of focus pictures of the panties in question or you can just look at these clear images I found of the panties they're having such a fit about:

Image found at the Iron Image

Now what I want to tell you next is very important: women are the ones who buy and wear these panties. They are not forced on these women like some sort of rape educing underwear, nor are they a statement about the values that a woman places on her body and society's valuation of her as a person. They are underwear, a garment you wear under your clothes for your private needs and the needs of those who you share those intimate moments with. I have no more problem with these sort of items being displayed at a booth of that sort than do I have a problem with those items being displayed in biker stores.

You don't like it, don't buy it.

For Gareth-Michael Skarka that's not the point. The point is that these panties have naughty sayings on them at a child's eye level. And they're disgusting, depraved, sexual panties. He headed straight over to security:

. . . where I showed the pictures to a friend I have on the staff, who was as pissed off as I was. He promised to escalate it further up the chain . . . After that, I heard nothing more — things got very busy for me, and I was unable to head back to the other side of the hall to check up on things. On Twitter, more people started expressing shock and outrage. I mentioned it to several colleagues at the show as well. I know that many of these people filed complaints of their own with GenCon.

On Sunday, I heard several reports from friends that the panties were gone — but I’ve also heard via people on Twitter that they’d been only moved inside the booth, to share shelf space with the Nazi fetish bullshit. So far, there has been no official statement of any kind made by GenCon regarding this issue . . . (When Nazis Get Rapey)

The feigned moral outrage is becoming insufferable. Honestly it bothers me more that he's putting on this big show about how he reported the incident to a friend he has on staff and then he got too damned busy to check up on things than the actual panties bother me.

. . . GenCon has vendors guidelines, and a clear policy governing harassment, and women’s panties emblazoned with encouragements of harassment and date-rape would seem to be clear violations of these policies. The silence, especially given that complaints began as early as Friday morning, is concerning.

The message that these products, and any action taken (or untaken) regarding them, sends about our industry is a fairly loud one. I will be keeping my ear to the ground for any news regarding this issue, and will pass along anything I discover . . . (When Nazis Get Rapey)

I'm assuming that Gareth-Michael Skarka is referring to the vender guideline that "No exhibitor or member of an exhibit may promote, display, or behave in a manner considered offensive to decency or good taste as determined by Show Management . . ." (Gen Con Vender Guidelines pg. 3). Clearly this notorious booth is considered acceptable by Show Management for its Nazi paraphernalia and pornographic films so I very much doubt that some novelty underwear is suddenly going to push them over the edge into the unacceptable range.

I'm not even going to waste my time with his drum beating on the harassment policy as that's just an over reaction to the fact that he didn't like what they were doing.

Instead I'm going to focus on what really got my hackles up about this blog post and why I even bothered with the damned thing in the first place: I can not stand mock outrage. This entry is nothing more than a series of false outrages set up so that Gareth can point out to the world how vile these people at the Belle and Blade are and how he took a stand against them. Yeah they are absolutely assholes for the Nazi smut - but then you crawled right in the shit with them when you started this feigned indignation.

You're not a hero standing up for the little woman against the misogynistic Nazis of Belle and Blade. By your own admission you didn't talk to the booth proprietor about how offensive you found the panties and the Nazi glorification, instead you ran to a guy you knew on the staff so he could be the bad guy. Then you got too busy to go back over to the booth later and tell the proprietor where he could go and how he could get there for this depravity. For three days after you found out about these offensive panties you couldn't find the time to take fifteen minutes out of your busy schedule to walk over there like a man and say: what the hell is wrong with you.

You, Gareth-Michael Skarka, didn't do anything. You weren't a man standing up for the little guy, you were a coward running to someone else hoping that they would actually do something when you were too afraid to do it yourself. And you're so busy on your blog proclaim how righteous you were for your actions that you can't even see the reality of the situation.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Economies in Dungeons and Dragons Part 2

In my last post, Economies in Dungeons and Dragons Part 1, I discussed the Static and Dynamic economies possible in the game. To sum up Dynamic economies are labor intensive on the part of the Dungeon Master and become time consuming to the point of obsessiveness. There are so many factors present in a Dynamic economy that is is incredibly easy to forget some factor and screw up the over all nature of your economy. By contrast the Static economy is the simplest economy a Dungeon Master can create. The Dungeon Master establishes prices and no matter where the players go, what they do, or who they do it to, the price is the same. There are no currency variations or itinerant workers to worry about. So unless you want to adjust the prices or limit down the items available to your players there is no paperwork involved in this economy - just open your book and go.

Modified Dungeons and Dragons Economies

The Modified economy is the bastard child of the Static and Dynamic economies and is the one that I personally use in my games.This version of the game economy requires a Dungeon Master to assess the following information: currency valuation, imported/exported goods, price variation, and world conditions.

Currency Valuation

It's the little cruelties that make the game feel real in my experience.

Unlike in Dynamic economies currency valuation is established as a fixed rate. In my personal campaign, Dyvers, I have five national currencies to work with: Greyhawk, Dyvers, Furyondy, Veluna, and the Duchy of Urnst. There are other currencies out there in the world but these are the ones common enough for them to become a direct concern in my campaign - especially as my players begin to interact with the world in a more engaged manner. The chart below will provide a better understanding of the currency valuations of my campaign.

1 Gold Coin	Greyhawk	Dyvers	Furyondy	Veluna	The Duchy of Urnst
Greyhawk	****	1 gold, 3 silver, 4 copper	1 gold, 4 silver, 8 copper	1 gold, 4 silver, 1 copper	7 gold, 5 silver, 3 copper
Dyvers	7 silver, 5 copper	****	1 gold, 1 silver, 1 copper	1 gold, 5 copper	5 gold, 6 silver, 3 copper
Furyondy	6 silver, 8 copper	9 silver	****	9 silver, 5 copper	5 gold, 8 copper
Veluna	7 silver, 1 copper	9 silver, 5 copper	1 gold, 5 copper	****	5 gold, 3 silver, 6 copper
The Duchy of Urnst	1 gold, 4 silver, 1 copper	1 gold, 4 silver, 1 copper	1 gold, 4 silver, 1 copper	1 gold, 4 silver, 1 copper	****

Now unlike the Dynamic economy's currency standard method I have simplified my life by using real world currencies and their actual exchange rates. For my purposes I allowed the whole unit to represent gold pieces, the first decimal position to represent silver pieces, and the second decimal position to represent copper pieces. I used the Euro with Greyhawk, the U.S. dollar with Dyvers, the Australian dollar with Furyondy, the Canadian dollar with Veluna, and the Argentinian peso with the Duchy of Urnst. By using the this method I can quickly exchange prices between the various regions and I can also create a situation where foreign merchants use unfamiliar currency exchange rates to snake coins away from my players. It's the little cruelties that make the game feel real in my experience.

It's when things are going smoothly that they hate me and refuse to speak my name without a curse attached.

Anyway, let's take an example to demonstrate the ease for conversion through this method. Krongar the Barbarian has all his coins in Dyvers' currency and is visiting the Free City of Greyhawk. While there he decides that he wants to purchase a Great Sword valued at 50 gold pieces (gp). How much does he need?

50 gp x 1.41 = 70 gp and 5 sp Velunan coins

Now of course things get more difficult when you have multiple currencies but with my groups they typically choose to convert their coin into the currency with the most buying power. When that option isn't available to them I always make sure to have a Money Changer located within the city.

Imported and Exported Goods

Back in City Works Mike Mearls suggested that we limit our imports and exports to five items each and this is with good reason as you can quickly create a situation where you're working continuously in the red and your players are always coming at things cross ways. Now I'm actually okay with that. My group tends to do better the more that things go awry so if the economy gets messed up because Iuz launches a war or the Horned Society decide to raid boats in the Nyr Dyv they feel right in their element. It's when things are going smoothly that they hate me and refuse to speak my name without a curse attached.

"The fuck you will, I have a god-damned chart and spread sheets!"

With Dyvers I've been patterning the city after some of the larger cities I've actually lived in; so for my campaign any base materials are treated as an import and finished goods are treated as exports. My imports are things such as grains, stones, rough gems, bulk metals, and lumber; while my exports include items such as armor, weapons, tapestries, and jewelry. By doing so I have a quick base line for any questions about prices of items and it also gives me more knowledge about my city. For example, just from my exports I know that I have a city with craftsmen and higher paying jobs.

It's little things like that, that I use to maintain the verisimilitude of my setting without losing flexibility.

Price Variation

As with the Dynamic economy I am going to use Mike Mearls' valuation guide for item price variation in conjunction with my currency standards from above. This will provide me with a set of values that will prevent my players from simply walking in and saying, "I'll buy the dagger for 4 gold."

"The fuck you will, I have a god-damned chart and spread sheets!"

Rating	Valuation
Rare	2 x regular value
Scarce	1.50 x regular value
Average	regular value
Abundant	0.75 x regular value
Glut	0.50 x regular value

The above table was not provided by Mike in City Works, but I like to make my life easy so I'm including it here again for anyone who'd like to use this set up to run a modified economy.

I avoid questions of market manipulation, price gouging (though I do occasionally partake of the practice), foreign investors, market rushes, intentional shortages, weather manipulations, and the such because it makes my head hurt and encourages me to make spread sheets.

World Conditions

The final thing that you have to take into account with a Modified economy is the world conditions. Now this isn't to the extent that a Dynamic economy would have you concern yourself with; instead you're only going to pay attention to the big things. Strikes, wars, floods, wild fires and the like are things that will impact your supplies and will adjust your prices. I avoid questions of market manipulation, price gouging (though I do occasionally partake of the practice), foreign investors, market rushes, intentional shortages, weather manipulations, and the such because it makes my head hurt and encourages me to make spread sheets.

Economics in Dungeons and Dragons Part 1

We have no more of idea what is happening in our game economies than do the talking heads on CNBC

After reading City Works by Fantasy Flight Games I've found myself thinking a lot about the nature of economics in the Dungeons and Dragons game. After experimenting for a few days it seems that the game is only able to support three simple types of economies: Static, Dynamic, and Modified. If we use more complex economies, such as fully realized capitalism or communism, then we begin to run into the real world problems that face modern economists. Which means that we have no more of idea what is happening in our game economies than do the talking heads on CNBC know about what's happening in the markets. So for that reason I'm eschewing the more complex economies and focusing on the three simplified versions.

Static Dungeon and Dragons Economies

The Static economy is the least labor intensive economy out of the three. It is no more complex than pulling out your player's handbook and going down the list to purchase an item. In earlier versions of the game this was a simple way to get play moving as the list consisted of nothing more deadly than a mundane weapon. That began to change in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition as the Player's Options books began to provide more specialized weapons; still though, for the majority of cases these weapons were not magical and held no more intrinsic advantage than any others.

All of that began to change with Third Edition.

In Third Edition you began to have books like Weapons of Legacy where powerful magical items could be purchased with a price that players were expected to see. This was a major change from previous editions as there appeared several books with significantly more powerful items available for purchase within their pages. This created a situation where the Dungeon Master had to more carefully monitor what books his players were using and what items they were purchasing. This created slightly more work for the Dungeon Master but in a static economy where prices are fixed it also provided a situation where the Dungeon Master had less work as he could simply say, "All prices are as listed."

There are perfectly valid solutions to this situation but they all involve spread sheets and hours of tedious data entry

In Fourth Edition this sort of system really ran off the rails as the Player's Handbook actually has prices for magical items up to 30th level right there for everyone to see; and it is incredibly difficult to look at another person and say, I realize what the book says about pricing but we're not fucking following it, without coming off as an asshole. Now there are perfectly valid solutions to this situation but they all involve spread sheets and hours of tedious data entry.

Dynamic Dungeons and Dragons Economies

A Dynamic Economy is the closest approximation to the real world we can get and still control all the factors involved. It will require the Dungeon Master to keep track of a few different factors: currency valuation, imported goods, exported goods, harvest fluctuations, inflation and deflation of prices, current market tensions (such as wars, land disputes, guild disputes, et al.), and labor prices. It sounds like a lot because it is, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to do.

Currency valuation can be either in flux, if you hate yourself, or static.

Currency valuation can be either in flux, if you hate yourself, or static. A flux currency requires that you determine how much the currency changes in relation to other currencies. To begin you will need to choose a global currency backer as your standard for all subsequent currencies. This currency will always equal 1 and all others will be in relation to it. Next you will need to take each of the currencies available in your game and assigned them values in relation to 1. For example, if the nation of Rul is your global currency backer then its gold Ruble is the standard 1 gold in the players handbook; however, for its sister nation of Cormyr this not the case as it is set at a standard of 1 = 0.0046 or 1 gold Ruble is equal to 214 gold Crowns, 8 silver Sisters, and 5 copper Guineas in the Cormyr currency. Now if we were doing a static currency this would be the end of your work, but with a flux currency you have to consider other factors: how much of your currency is out there; how much do people want it; is it being counter-fitted. Each answer to these questions will adjust the value of your currencies either up or down which will in turn effect inflation, deflation, labor prices, imported good prices, and exported good prices. Here's the kicker, if you really want to do this in a realist way you have to determine the currency valuation daily.

If you're like me and you have no interest in determining fluctuations for fantasy currencies that your players may never actually encounter and that holds no real value for you game then you'd use a static currency. But if you like the idea of that sort of fluctuation within your game and the mirroring of real world currency markets have at it. It can be done - just not by me.

In order to determine the status of prices based on importation and exportation I'm going to take a page from Mike Mearls and use his simplified Economy from City Works. In brief you take five items in your economy and designate them as exports, take five more and designate them as imports. Imports are considered scarce items and are valued at 1.5 x normal value. Exports are considered glut items and are valued at .5 x regular value. All other items are valued according to the chart below based on their availability within your economy.

Rating	Valuation
Rare	2 x regular value
Scarce	1.50 x regular value
Average	regular value
Abundant	0.75 x regular value
Glut	0.50 x regular value

Now it's a simple system that can be ported into just about any game with relative ease if you use it as is; but if you're talking about a Dynamic economy then you have to consider the intangible factors in your trade network. Consider some of these questions: is Cormyr at war; do they no longer need your grain; how does that overabundance of grain impact the price; is there anyone else your merchants can sell the grain to; how does the local dock loader's strike affect the price of your grain; and so on, and so on.

Everything in your world is interconnected and in a Dynamic economy you have to realize that each action is going to have consequences that as a Dungeon Master you have to track. For example, a good harvest will reduce the price of grain; which reduces the price of bread; which in turn makes it to where bread merchants and millers are making higher profits (for a while) or under cutting each other (and thereby driving the price down) to drive each other out of business. By the same contrast if your players burn down the field to kill off a nest of giant spiders then there is a scarcity of grain; which raises the price of grain; which increases the price of bread; which in turn reduces the bread merchants and millers profit margins and causes some of them to go out of business because people can't afford their products.

Devaluation is a scary thing for a Dungeon Master as you can unintentionally ruin the economy of your fantasy city, nation, and world just by allowing your players to find the treasure they so desperately want.

Before I move on to the Modified economy I just want to touch on the devaluation of a currency. Devaluation is a scary thing for a Dungeon Master as you can unintentionally ruin the economy of your fantasy city, nation, and world just by allowing your players to find the treasure they so desperately want. Think about it in these terms: your players have killed the dragon Gnarlwood and are flush with a million gold Rubles. They go into town and begin purchasing and throwing money around like it's rain. Suddenly a gold piece isn't worth as much because there's one just about everywhere you look. So the lower currencies begin to lose value as well and before you know it you can't buy anything with a copper piece, silver is basically useless, and people are spending five gold just to buy what once cost five copper. In a Dynamic economy this can happen easily and there are examples of such things happening in fantasy game settings (look at Dragonlance where a gold piece is essentially useless).

More later.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Dungeons and Dragons 2013 Gen Con Presentation

This year's Dungeons and Dragons presentation at Gen Con was kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand they really didn't have anything concrete to drop on us that might get a rise out of the crowd, like say the release date for the new edition of the product. But there was quite a bit of interesting information.

Interesting Tid Bits:

The Playtest packets have given the Research and Development teams an incite into how actual players and Dungeon Masters are playing Dungeons and Dragons.
The Final Playtest packet will be done in September of 2013
The Playtest has been considered wildly successful within Wizards of the Coast with more than 150,000 people sign up and download the rules
The next edition is entering into the Quality and Assurance process
The Sundering Event is using a form of player development to determine the outcome of the event and its impact on the Forgotten Realms
Gale Force 9 will be producing two unpainted miniture figures for each of the six books produced for the Sundering
The Isteval video (see below) is really interesting and actually has even me interested in the Forgotten Realms
Balder's Gate Enhanced Edition released

The Boring Stuff:

Kre-O figures are being produced for Dungeons and Dragons (6 as of now, more later)
Playdek is releasing a computerized version of the Lords of Waterdeep board game
DeNA is producing a free to play mobile game titled Arena of War (will influence outcome of the Sundering)
Chronicles of Mystara by Capcom (actually two games but under the same brand)
Dungeons and Dragons Online Shadowfell Conspiracy released August 19, 2013
Neverwinter Online released a video to celebrate 2 million players and their video was complete trash due to server issues. Below is what the video should have looked like:

Things to Mull Over:

Wizards is actively trying to expand the Dungeons and Dragons brand to other media in an effort to expand the game's influence
Why was the crowd so quite throughout the program

Thoughts on the Presentation:

I found the overall presentation to better than a stick in the eye. It was dry, as Mike Mearls tends to be when he's speaking to the public, and someone made the mistake of muting the crowd noise to the point where you can just barely hear them (if you watch that first video and listen for the applause when Mike's introduced you'll really notice what I'm talking about). Now normally that would be the right move but when you're presenting the future of a brand you really need some crowd noise to express the excitement of those watching. Watch the corporate presentation videos from Apple or Walmart and you'll see what I mean.

The Sundering Event is really intriguing to me. I like the interplay between the adventures, books, and video games and their impact on the overall narrative; but I have a hard time accepting that there is really as much room within the narrative for my actions to matter as Mike presents. I find it difficult to believe with the video games in particular as there are only so many variables that game narratives can allow and to believe that my choice of two or three outcomes is really a good way to incorporate my actions seems a folly. The books are a typical move from Wizards (and even TSR back when they had the brand) so that's nothing new. But the adventure is different. Adventures are unpredictable. Adventures ask for something new and I wonder how much of that they'll let us have.

The 150,000 individuals is a neat bit of information that Mike dropped on us. From their research, as he says, they know that the majority of downloads are done by Dungeon Masters for their groups. If we extrapolate that number by four (the traditionally accepted average group size) then we can assume that around 600,000 people have participated, at some point, in the playtest. That's definitely a success in my book. Of course even if that number is inflated 150,000 unique individuals who have signed up and downloaded the playtest is impressive nonetheless.

After watching the video I noticed two complaints being issued over, and over again, and both were summed up by the blog Tenkar's Tavern (which is a pretty good read):

Sadly, after watching this video I now know what "Dungeons & Dragons" means - recycled fiction, 2 MMORPGS, lego like ugly ass crap with one recognizable character from the Drizzt series of books and it isnt even him, iOS Battlegames, iOS Boardgames, re-released 20+ year old computer games and if you are lucky there might be an RPG - but that's just to drive sales for all of the previously listed money makers.

Yes, I know this shit is a business, but WotC has gotten so corporate it's scary.

They will never sell the D&D trademark, but perhaps, one day, an RPG titled Dungeons & Dragons will live up to it's heritage in the hands of others. [Dungeons & Dragons the RPG - Alas, I Knew You Well (D&D GenCon 2013 Presentation)]

Complaint No. 1: Wizards of the Coast is ruining the purity of the Dungeons and Dragons Brand

No, they are not.

The Dungeons and Dragons property has always meant more than just the role-playing game. Gary Gygax himself brought the property to books, cartoons and action figures. TSR would go on after Gary to bring the property to video games, boardgames, books, comics, collectible cards, magazines, and toys. And yes, they recycled fiction just like the current era of dungeons and dragons products. Wizards of the Coast has followed that tradition with video games, MMORPGs, books, magazines, toys, comic books, audio books, and movies. So why get upset about the company continuing to do what has been done with the brand for nearly forty years?

Complaint No. 2: Wizards of the Coast has gone corporate and is ruining the game!

Wizards isn't publishing from Peter Adkison's basement any longer - nor would you really want it to be doing so if you like the material they're publishing. Basement publishers are great because you can have an intimate relationship with them but when it comes to sending me my shit on time they suck. They can't meet the demands of an incredibly successful business and for proof of that you need to look no further than the hundreds of late and terminal Kickstarters that have sprung up recently in the hobby.

But ignore that and just consider this: the Dungeons and Dragons property has been attached to a corporation since the TSR days. Being a part of a corporation has meant that the hobby has continued on even after TSR was mismanaged into bankruptcy and almost killed the game completely. It has allowed for the open gaming license which in turn allowed for the Old School Renascence movement that has captured my imagination and that of so many other gamers. It has allowed for new partnerships with groups like Paizo, White Wolf Games, Gale Force 9, DC comics, and so many others. It has kept our hobby flush with new materials for play and to inspire the minds of new Dungeon Masters. It has increased the quality of our products by allowing the company to generate more revenue than straight sales would allow. It has allowed for five editions of the game to be published in the mass market (Basic/Expert/Companion, Advanced, Second Edition Advanced, Third Edition, and Fourth Edition). In many ways being a corporation is the only reason why any of us were ever able to encounter the niche product in the first place.

So I'm asking this for anyone reading: what's so bad about Wizards of the Coast being a corporation?

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Legends and Lairs: City Works by Fantasy Flight Games Part 2

For every ounce of goodie you find in City Works you'll have to dig through a ton of esoteric garbage to get there

When we left off in the previous post, Legends and Lairs: City Works by Fantasy Flight Games Part 1, I had finished with the first two chapters and had come away with an overall positive impression of the product. Now there are several faults with the product that had become glaringly obvious. First the product is given to over-thinking and over-complicating the basic processes around the creation of a fantasy city setting. Secondly, the product is subject to the normal trials and tribulations associated with any Mike Mearls production: namely that for every ounce of goodie you find in City Works you'll have to dig through a ton of esoteric garbage to get there. Fortunately that ton is well written and thought provoking so it's worth the effort.

Chapter 3: City Construction

I found myself going glass eyed and wishing that I had more alcohol in the house

The third chapter in City Works begins by laying out the districts of a typical city both socially and topically to good effect. Now I would not personally use all of the groupings that Mike Mearls ascribes but I can find no real fault with his logic or descriptions in these first four pages of the chapter.

It is when he describes how to create a map of the city I found myself going glass eyed and wishing that I had more alcohol in the house. Seriously, this section is overly complicated and choked with needless rules designed to dictate everything from the size of your city blocks and their percentages of the overall land area to the layout of the districts and the types of streets you detail.

Honestly the chapter only has three sections worth reading City Precincts (pg. 86 - 90), Key Structures (pg 101 - 102), and the Example Map (pg 103). From those sections you can create a useful map that will service all your major needs without the morass of rules that Mike created.

Chapter 4: City Adventures

Tone is absolutely everything when it comes to running Dungeons and Dragons

This chapter is for the Dungeon Master and in many ways this is the best chapter of the book. There are no delusions of ease for Mike Mearls and he begins the chapter by talking about how everything about the city is interconnected. For Mike this means that the architecture, city folk, landmarks, and tone mean everything. I would argue that he confuses everything by trying to be too detailed. Tone is absolutely everything when it comes to running Dungeons and Dragons: it encompasses the people you meet, the scenery, the way that events are told and portrayed. To take it aside and say that it is a factor along with the others that make up tone is a mistake and creates a situation where you're trying to do too much.

That's a recipe for disaster.

The key to setting a good tone for an adventure is to strike the right balance between too much detail and not enough. You need to be evocative with just enough verisimilitude to not alert your players of where things are going. But if you're trying to do too much you will screw it all up.

Urban Adventure Basics (pg 112 - 119) is a great resource for new Dungeon Masters and an okay review of the process of adventure writing. Again he is overly detailed but the kernel is good and worth digesting. Just don't get your head wrapped up in all the mess he chucks on the page.

The Urban Environments section (pg. 119 - 126) is an okay resources but he really tries too hard to provide rule mechanics for every situation that you can come across. I don't need a mechanic for the chase or for going in the sewers. A simple description of each of these environments without mechanics would have been a better use of the page. That's true for far too much of this book.

Urban Events (pg 127 - 134) is a mixed bag. You have rules for fires (pg 127), floods (pg 128-129), and riots (pg 131 - 133) which are essentially useless in most games as any good Dungeon Master is going to have those events move according to the players actions dramatizing the play as much as possible with the players' enjoyment foremost in his mind rather than worrying about the rules associated with such events. But then you have the plague (pg 129 - 131) and siege (pg 133 - 134) where Mike provides some really interesting ideas about how these sort of events affect the city and game play. Now I don't agree with everything, but there is enough crunch here where I find myself intrigued with where I can go from his starting point.

Chapter 5: City Encounters

To waste your time fictionalizing these fantastical people who even you don't believe in is the very definition of wasting your time.

This chapter is mostly filled with tables for all manner of encounters. Some of them are fantastic but most are not that great in and of themselves. My suggestion is to look at his tables and make your own. Detail the tables for your city and forget the generic crap he left for you.

Oh, and the Non Player Character creation tables awful. I just hate how piss poor every NPC table I run across is so fucking useless. They barely function and you can make up something better just by thinking about people you've actually seen and encountered in your daily life. To waste your time fictionalizing these fantastical people who even you don't believe in is the very definition of wasting your time. Be a better story teller. Think for yourself and use your experiences to create a dynamic world that your players will believe in as much as they believe in you and your abilities as a Dungeon Master. Using these fucking tables is lazy and spells out disaster for your game. Make the fucking effort to be better.

Overall Review

I don't regret buying City Works, I'm just not overly thrilled with the experience I've had reading it.

City Works is a fine product designed to provide you with a framework to build your fantastical cities around. It has some really good resources and couple of classes worth playing any day of the week. But there is a lot of effort involved in wading through this resource. The artwork is nothing special and certainly isn't helping the book - of course it isn't hurting the book either as was the case with Dragons by AEG.

I don't regret buying City Works, I'm just not overly thrilled with the expereince I've had reading it.

Score: 5 out of 10

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Legends and Lairs: City Works by Fantasy Flight Games Part 1

You could easily dismiss [Fantasy Flight Games] as a third rate knock off . . . produced by some shiftless hobo fueled on super glue and whippets.

The Legends and Lairs product line has often been overlooked in spite of their quality; and looking at their covers its easy to see that unless you're familiar with Fantasy Flight Games you could easily dismiss them as a third rate knock off product line produced by some shiftless hobo fueled on super glue and whippets. And if you did, you'd miss out on one of the better third party publishers from the d20 boom.

City Works clocks in at a 157 pages of dedicated material with an additional 16 pages previewing their next book Sorcery and Steam. I'm ignoring the preview as I own that book too and will be reviewing it later.

Chapter 1: Characters

It is a common complaint where Mike Mearls is concerned that you will have to wade through some copious amounts of cow flotsam . . .

The chapter begins with a quick explanation of the difference between an urban and wilderness environment. Why this is necessary I haven't a clue though I would wager a guess that Mike Mearls was getting paid by the word as every chapter begins with a rather redundant series of introductions and an unnecessary addition of another hundred words or so. This introduction is followed by the subheading Running Characters (pg 6 - 11). Now I want to point out that in my last review, Dragons by AEG, that I didn't come to anything useful in that book until page 10, and what I found was rather measly at best. By comparison there are already neat little ideas in this product starting at page 5 where Mike has had the forethought to provide the player with some ideas for the basic classes in an urban environment. Some of these are great, like the Barbarian as Bodyguard (pg. 6) and the Fighter as an Officer (pg. 8); while others are just so very, very bad.

It is a common complaint where Mike Mearls is concerned that you will have to wade through some copious amounts of cow flotsam in order to get to the gems that he drops every two or three pages. But my god! The Cleric is a missionary (pg 7); the Fighter an officer (pg 8); the Bard a star of the stage (pg. 6); and the fucking Druid is a damned gardener (pg. 8)? That's the best you could come up with?

Really?

And you follow up that brilliant moment by copying the officer career path onto the Ranger (pg 10), proclaiming that the Monk is a martial arts instructor (pg. 9), the Paladin is a Justicar (pg. 9), and the Rogue (pg. 10) and Wizard (pg. 11) can aspire to no greater height than Guild Membership.

Really, Mike? That's the best we can do for those guys. Nothing creative or unique just some trite mess that we have to wade through and pretend like it's all cool? Right.

it's as though they were so focused on chanting to the reader "Organization, organization, organization!" that they forgot to follow their own advise.

Next we come to the inevitable Feats (pg 11) section which manages not to provide me with anything new and should have been lumped into the General Advise (pg. 12) section instead. And while we're on the General Advise section let me just say that this section should have been at the beginning of the chapter with a fuller discussion of playing in the city environment and the proper mindset that you have to develop for the urban game. Then we should have begun talking about the base classes and tailoring them to the city life.

This book could be so much better just by cleaning up the organization of the chapters and streamlining the thoughts expressed. I swear it's as though they were so focused on chanting to the reader "Organization, organization, organization!" that they forgot to follow their own advise.

At this point in the book we come to the Urban Character Classes (pg 13 - 25). Now normally when you come across a third party character class you hold your nose and tip-toe past it hoping that your players don't dredge it up because they're usually fucked; but unlike most of my previous experiences Mike Mearls is actually able to create two usable classes in this book: the Acrobat (pg. 13 - 17) and the Pit Fighter (pg. 21 - 25). Each possess inspired abilities - I love, love the Acrobatic Maneuvers, espescially Death From Above (pg 15) - are well thought out, and don't overpower the game's base classes. Which is phenomenal.

We follow this up with Urban Prestige Classes (pg 25 - 32) which are mostly useless but there is a gem here too. The Speaker of the City (pg 28 - 30) is outstanding. The concept is really well done and it's actually carried out in thoughtful manner that makes it worth using.

The Urban Feats (pg 32 - 35) are a mixed bag with only two being worth including in your regular third edition game: Face in the Crowd (pg 33) and Opportunistic Shot [Fighter General] (pg 34). The other feats are either too nuanced to be used in a sandbox game (which mine almost always are) or just simply begging to be abused in ways that will make you regret buying this book.

The last part of this book is dedicated to Spells (pg 35 -36) and the dubious Urbanmancy Prestige Spells (pg. 36 - 39) choking the remainder of the chapter. Of those last four pages only the spell Erad's Silent Killer (pg 35) is worthy of being included in an active game. The others are mostly trash and barely worth reading.

Chapter 2: City Basics

This is the sort of chapter that can drive a man to make spread sheets

This is the real meat of the book with a detailed analysis of how a city comes together through a mindful conceptualization of the fantasy setting in its most basic sense. It is well written and thought provoking. It provides a very basic framework to organize your city around with a naive understanding of political groups, power structures, and governments.

Under no circumstances should you read this chapter.

This is the sort of chapter that can drive a man to make spread sheets detailing the resource management structures of imaginary civilizations with no tangible gain from his efforts. Following the processes detailed in this chapter will cause you to have a stroke because will spend years formulating a city that will not survive two minutes with your players.

Remember, to your players: your government is meaningless; your laws are worthless clap trap; your detailed histories will be ignored; and your magnificent city's origin story will be a joke. This is a game that can be incredibly rich and detailed but it only works if your players become interested in the world. Until they do, creating all that extra work for yourself is asking for pain and suffering. Instead of laboring for nothing skip the majority of this chapter and read the following sections: Trials (pg 77), Organized Crime (pg 78), Economics (pg. 79 - 80), and Religion (pg 80 - 84). Each of these sections have enough inspirational elements to help your game along without undercutting your momentum.

Before I finish this chapter I would like to point out that the Secrecy section (pg 84 - 85) has one of the most useless game mechanics I have ever run across. Forget that nonsense.

More later.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Dragons by AEG

Dragons by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) begins with the statement that this book is designed as ". . . a handbook for hunters . . ." (pg 4) and as a resource for Dungeon Masters committed to the idea of running encounters with dragons in their campaigns. As a goal in an accessory book this is admirable; though the mixed goals should be separated into different books so that each could narrow its focus eliminating the glut of material that is essentially useless to both groups.

Section One: From Whence the Legend Comes

Such triteness is just a disservice to us as consumers and as active participants in our hobby.

This section of the book begins with a short bit of fiction designed to put the reader in the proper mindset of the book. I would like to tell you that this is carried out with the sort of expertise practiced by Games Workshop or even with the steady hand of Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately the story comes across as a poor man's version of an Ursula K. Le Guin novel only without the originality and beauty of her prose. It's a disappointing introduction to the book and sets a poor tone for the overall product.

As I worked my way through this section I found myself thinking - and not for the first time - that Dungeons and Dragons is stifled by generations of bad ideas and games. Think of the things that have become standard in your game. Are dwarves scottish or drunks? Do elves and dwarves hate each other? Are hobbits (halflings) fat and mostly lazy? Are gnomes foolish little things? Do orcs kill because they're orcs? Are ogres dumb brutes used as much for comic relief as a challenge? Do the NPCs in your campaign dominate the story?

Such triteness is just a disservice to us as consumers and as active participants in our hobby.

Anyway, there is very little worth salvaging from this section of the book.

The Legend of Grelig Shevik (pg 10) is an interesting touch on the idea of an eternal guardian and should be used in a different way than how it is presented in this book as it is wasted here.
The red dragon Apertis (pg 14, game information on pg. 156) is interesting more as an exercise in the trope than as an original idea in and of itself but there is enough meat on its bones that it's worth mentioning.
The bronze dragon Kahstyllan (pg 15), Castilian is how I would pronounce it, is a neat concept that is a bit derivative of Fizban from the Dragonlance, War of the Lance Cycle but I like how AEG was able to put this one together.

Section Two: To Touch the Sky

When was the last time you ran across a monster that had a cold?

The section is the beginning of the product's attempt at providing an extension of existing rules and the creation of its own. This is started with an attempt at expanding ten skills to provide a more 'useful' skill set for the player. I really wish that I could tell you that they succeeded in a way that made the game far better than it was before, but I can't. The way in which these skills are adjusted is mostly superfluous and the only useful idea out of the retooling is the idea that you can use Decipher Script to create a cipher. I like that idea as it creates a situation where players can actually do something really useful for themselves.

Of the new feats presented in Dragons there are only two worth incorporating into your game: Contortionist (pg 29) and Taunt (pg 32). The rest are either dependent on the pseudo narrative created in the book or are just so fundamentally useless that there's no point in wasting a feat slot on their inclusion.

When it comes to prestige classes I've always held that unless you're running a one shot there has to be a feasible way to work the class into the game otherwise there's no point in using damned thing. And the prestige classes found in Dragon (pg 32 - 44) are the worst sort of example of useless, page consuming, trite additions to the game. They are almost impossible to work into an existing narrative without convoluted intellectual contortions and would make the player who received the prestige so much more powerful than his companions that you run the risk of them dominating the other players simply because there is nothing they can do to stop them.

The new items are worthless and some of them are so poorly designed that there's no way I would allow them in my game. Take Kanegor's Bitter Pill (pg 44) which contains ". . . a small cloth bundle that holds a specially formulated mixture of chemicals that almost every living creature hideous to both taste and smell . . ." (pg 44). Now this little gem is supposed to be designed to fight dragons - a creature that it has been emphasized has heightened senses throughout the book - but what fucking dragon is going to fall for that trick? One with a cold?

When was the last time you ever ran across a monster that had a cold?

It is not until we come to Dragon Alchemy (pg 49 - 61) that there is anything really useful to be said about this book. This section alone makes up for so much disappointment with this product as it provides you with a frame work for using portions of the dragon in spells, potions, and all manner of alchemical goodness. Now is this section perfect? By no means; but it does provide you with a frame work that will allow you to create a better set of uses for the dragon and its by-products than this book ever dreamed possible.

After having waded through so much triteness with this book I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the Dragon Magic section (pg. 69 - 77). Of the twenty-five spells presented six are actually worth using: Death Curse (pg. 71), Drought of Eternity's Well (pg. 72), Hibernation (pg. 73), Scour the Earth (pg. 75), Secret of the Grave (pg. 75), and Smother Magic (pg. 76). Hell, three of them (Drought of Eternity's Well, Hibernation, and Secret of the Grave) are so cool that I actually found myself wondering why this sort of creativity isn't present throughout the rest of the book.

Seriously, if you're capable of coming up with Dragon Alchemy and those six spells then why is this book so bad?

Section 3: What Lies Beyond

When you start dropping in automated dragons that are roving across the battlefield like flying tanks fed on hate and nightmares you're going to get my attention.

This section is by and large a waste of time. The new dragons are barely worth mentioning and a lot of opportunity to come up with inventive opponents for players is wasted. They came close with the Dragon Golem (pg 93) but would have been so much better off by creating a Clockwork Dragon or some other form of mechanized dragon that would have inspired so many new questions and challenges for the players. After all, we've all seen and fought golems, but when you start dropping in automated dragons that are roving across the battlefield like flying tanks fed on hate and nightmares you're going to get my attention.

The book follows up this disappointing section by giving the dragons character classes (pg 130 - 144) because obviously dragons aren't enough by themselves so you need to beef them up. No. If the dragons you're throwing at your players aren't challenging the problem lies with you not with the fucking dragon.

Be a better Dungeon Master.

The only part of this section that even comes close to presenting a good idea is A World Lit Only By Dragon Fire (pg 145 - 149). This section has a few kernels of goodness but really falls short of some real greatness as was expressed in Dragonlance and far short of the perfection that can be found in the Dark Sun setting. If you want to see how to run a game where the dragons are in charge do yourself a favor and pick up either the second edition Dark Sun game or the fourth edition Dark Sun game (which is actually really good).

Section Four: From Bone to Sinew

For me this section would have been a far better introduction to the book than for a final wind down. It's better written, though that isn't saying much, than Section One and provides a better foundation for Section Two and Three. It isn't that heavy mechanically and it has a bit of good crunch.

There really isn't that much here.