I am totally making my own post out of this instead of putting it in the comments of Jer's post in order to make it look like I actually blog here too

My co-blogger ("Jer", you might not recognize the name because I totally dominate him, number-of-postswise) appears to be underexcited about the extraplanar cosmology of the upcoming D&D 4th edition.

Going with the theory that more is better, how about we just add a few more planes?

The Plainscape: a boring reflection of the natural world.

The Kisscape: Dark, hellish and totally rockin'.

The Ke'istone: Eerily silent except for the ever-present song of the demonic Calyopee, adventurers traveling to this realm my find themselves pastry-faced and depantsified following an extended chase involving the local militia, an out-of-control rations cart, and , say, a living statue in a porkpie hat.

Modokspace: A short, squat, and big-faced reflection of the natural world.

Officescape: Yeah, we're gonna need you to put covers on those character sheets, ok?

Teh Sy'b'rplanes: Fashioned much like a highly complex series of tubes, most adventurers to these worlds find themselves trapped at the unmagnificent Theater of Yutoob for seemingly weeks on end, unable to summon any sort of will for mounting an escape other than to make inane, irrelevant and offensive comments about the actors on stage. Exists astrally opposite Teh Meatscape.

The Azfinctersezwat: Shyeah, right!

And, others. Hey! Maybe someone could think of some funny ones.

4e D&D Cosmology

Okay, so yesterday evening they did post the promised Design and Development article on the 4e planar cosmology over at Wizards' D&D Insider website.

The article describes four planes that are going to be a part of the 4e cosmology:

• The Astral Sea - A vast plane containing the various planar domains of the gods


• The Elemental Chaos - A plane of vast elemental energy


• The Shadowfell - A dark reflection of the "natural world", tied to undead and shadows


• The Feywild - A wild reflection of the "natural world", tied to the fey

I hate to say it, but I'm a little bit underwhelmed.

Read More

The ideas aren't bad in and of themselves, but they're - somewhat predictable. In fact, they feel an awful lot like the old World of Darkness cosmology - you have a Shadowlands, a "Near Umbra", and a "High Umbra" in the Shadowfell, the Feywild, and the Astral Sea respectively. Not that these breakdowns are unique to WoD either - it's basically an Underworld, a Spirit World, and a Heaven - a formulation that many us who have thrown a lot of different myths and pantheons into our games have probably come up with independently of any particular game design.

Now, generic isn't necessarily bad. In fact, a strong argument can be made that this actually sets up some iconic places for adventures to take place - moreso than some of the current locations in the D&D cosmology. The Shadowfell is probably going to be a more interesting adventure site than the Ethereal, the Plane of Shadow, or the Negative Material Plane - the three planes it looks to be replacing. The traditional D&D cosmology is certainly distinctive, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a natural place for setting adventures.

In fact, the one bit of this cosmology that has me kind of interested is the "Elemental Chaos". Even if I never use the rest of the cosmology - even if I never buy 4e - that little bit can already be considered stolen for my games. I've never really liked the pure elemental planes - they're an interesting metaphysical construct for explaining magic, but as adventure sites they're kind of tough to handle. This new suggestion - with all of the elements thrown together into one primordial tempest and powerful entities able to exert their will to carve out portions of the chaos to their own ends - that sounds really cool. It takes the current elemental plane breakdown and gives it a twist. I like that. And I really wish I had thought of it a decade ago - once you see it it's obvious but I never thought to do it myself. I also have to admit that I really, really like the idea of the Abyss being a scar in the Elemental Chaos and demons being corrupted elementals. That's not in this article but it was in the previous Design & Development article, and I think it's a cool idea.

So in the end I guess I'm in the "net positive" camp for these ideas - they don't seem like bad ideas. At worst, some of them are kind of unimaginative. At best, some of them are really quite good. Since I don't expect game designers to constantly bat a thousand, I think I can keep my wait and see attitude to what they're developing.

Short post

No big rambling post today - I just wanted to point out to anyone in my gaming group that isn't following the whole "4th edition upgrade" stuff over at Wizards' website that there's an article up on changes being made to Demons and Devils in the new edition.

(You may need to get a D&D Insider account to read the article. They're free accounts, though.)

I've got to say I'm intrigued by all of the changes that are being floated around for 4e - specifically the "shared world" changes like this one. I know that AD&D has always had this distinction between Demons and Devils that was purely alignment based - and that carried over into D&D 3e. The distinction seemed kind of arbitrary to me primarily because the distinction between Chaotic and Lawful in D&D is so arbitrary.

Anyway, on these particular changes: I like the symmetry between the Devils and the Demons being proposed here. Devils are "fallen angels" who betrayed their master and murdered him. Demons are corrupted elemental spirits seeking destruction and ruin. I like this - I like it a lot actually. And it looks like this confirms something that the developers have been hinting about - changes to the way the "Inner Planes" (elemental planes) work as well. The Abyss is now part of something called the "Elemental Tempest" while the Hells float among the realms of the gods in the Astral Sea. The cosmology changes intrigue me - mostly because they sound somewhat like the cosmology of the B/X/C/M/I D&D sets that I played D&D from.

Every post that the D&D developers have made so far has piqued my interest a bit more. They're changing a lot of stuff - the question is whether they will end up throwing out good stuff when they add the new stuff. To a degree, this is subjective. Some folks would argue that just these proposed changes to demons and devils throws a lot of good stuff out. The developers really are having to walk a fine line here, and it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end.

EDIT: Bart Caroll has a blog post up with some more hints about 4e cosmology. There's apparently going to be another Design & Development article tomorrow with information about "the feywild, the shadowfell, elemental chaos and astral sea."

On Sandboxes

Well, that's a big gap between posts, isn't it?

Ahem. Well, in my defense, some stuff has come up in my personal life to slow down posting. My free time has been absorbed by a new addition to our family, and that sort of thing tends to make you re-prioritize your life.

Anyway, I wanted to point out something that was posted by Jeff Rients over at his gameblog. Jeff has posted a number of articles along the theme of running a "sandbox" campaign for roleplaying games, and I find this idea to be a lot of fun - not just for the nostalgia value, but because I think it may be a better model for my current gaming group than the model we're using right now.

The idea behind a "sandbox" game - or at least my interpretation of the sandbox game - is this: as the GM you start with some locations, some NPCs, and some adventure hooks, and then you plop your players into it and let them drive the story. Rather than laying out a campaign up front, the campaign grows organically from the actions of the players and their interaction with the elements in the "sandbox".

Now, this is not a new idea at all - in fact, this structure is how many (perhaps even most) folks played D&D when I was growing up and learning the game. My first campaigns basically used this model exclusively - because it was the model that "The Keep on the Borderlands", "The Lost City", and "The Isle of Dread" used in their presentation and those were the adventures that taught me what roleplaying was. My first two campaigns were basically multi-month exursions in the Caves of Chaos and then delving in the ziggurat atop Cynicidea.

But then I started buying more modules, and I found out I was "doing it wrong".

Read More

Tom Moldvay was (and still is) one of my favorite module writers from back in the day. He was responsible for three of my favorite D&D modules of all time - "The Lost City", "The Isle of Dread" and "Castle Amber". He was also responsible for the re-write of "Palace of the Silver Princess", which I've never had as much love for (though the original version not written by Moldvay and downloadable from Wizards' website is pretty cool - even with the odd errors it contains). With the exception of "Isle of Dread", these modules were more "mission-based" than "sandbox" - they gave a goal for PCs to successfully "complete" the adventure. "Castle Amber" and "Silver Princess" are both pretty egregious about it too - the adventurers are basically trapped in the scenario until they accomplish the end game. ("The Lost City" only barely has a mission at its core - the PCs need to find water at the beginning of the adventure. The "mission" is easily ignorable, and so I ignored it in my first campaign centered around the adventure. To this day I still barely consider it to have a mission focus at all.)

Most of the modules that I bought back in the day followed a similar formula - there was a mission that the PCs were supposed to accomplish to "complete" the adventure. And that started to color what I thought a "good" D&D adventure was supposed to have. A "good" adventure was supposed to have a goal for the PCs to accomplish, a set of villains for the PCs to fight, and a "mastermind" or "big bad evil" villain at the end of the adventure to bring a capstone to the adventure. My early subscription to Dungeon magazine reinforced these expectations, as did the RPGs outside of D&D that I started to buy. Eventually, these expectations led me away from D&D to more "narrative" systems that were built to emphasize narrative devices like plot, deeper character development, and adventure construction along the "goal-oriented" line. In High School and colleged D&D was ditched entirely in favor of games like TORG, Ars Magica, Mage, and others. Even when I ran D&D, I fought with the system to run Planescape and Ravenloft campaigns that fit that style of play.

When I came back to D&D in 1999 (with the 3e release) my prejudices about campaign and adventure design came with me. Our current campaign has had an overarching story arc with lots of little subplots percolating around, and each individual adventure has had its own smaller story arc that contributes directly or indirectly to the overall arc. But this has been somewhat unsatisfying for me (I'm not sure about my players - perhaps someone will respond in the comments). Mainly because of the big gaps in time between our games. When you go months between sessions, subtle story elements get forgotten, and the overall arc gets lost.

Would a sandbox style game lessen some of these problems? I'm not sure. I think in some ways it might be better - mainly because MY expectations for the game would be more realistic. The game could focus more on "what's right for this session" instead of "how does this fit into the campaign story arc" - and that might make things more enjoyable for me as the DM. On the other hand, individual story arcs from the players may not grow the way they did back in the old days if we aren't playing every week. That could result in less character development on the player's side and less fun for the players. I might be able to correct for this with some careful note taking, but I won't really know until I get a chance to try it.

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to start a new campaign - I've promised the group that this one goes to the end - which right now means either level 20 or Total Party Kill. They're only 9th level now, and TPK seems unlikely with this group, so we're probably a long ways away from starting a new campaign. But the next campaign I start I will push for running a sandbox game instead of a story-based one. Who knows, maybe I'll even break out the "Keep on the Borderlands" to kick the campaign off.

I'll probably post more on this theme as ideas percolate - especially since I'm finding that I have more time to THINK about gaming than time to PLAY. Sad but true - life no longer gives convenient schedules for gaming.

Argh

We missed posting on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

That just shows how much we've been falling down on the job - if anyone is going to post on Talk Like a Pirate Day, it should have been us.

Sigh.