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.

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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".

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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.

More Star Wars Saga Edition Thoughts

Following up on my post from yesterday, while I don't think everything in the Saga Edition previews would be suitable for use in D&D, there are some mechanics that look really, really good and, with some adaptation, could be very suitable for a D&D game.

The biggest change is the removal of saving throws and replacing them with defenses. At base, I like this a lot. This is a great idea. Saving throws are a throwback to the wargames that D&D grew from, and given the current incarnation of the game they no longer make as much sense as a mechanic as they did back in the day.

At their core, saving throws are a kind of "skill check". In older editions of the game they were very specialized and they represented how well your character could resist particular types of magic, or could jump out of the way of particular types of magical effects. They were divided by magic types (and which saving throws were in the game depended on whether you were playing D&D or AD&D), representing the ability to dodge "Dragon Breath" or resist magic from "Rods, Staffs and Wands" or resist Poison attacks.

When 3rd edition came along, these were simplified down to their core, abstract principles -- how well you could dodge out of the way (Reflex), how well you could physically withstand the effect (Fortitude) and how well you could mentally resist an effect (Willpower). While this simplification seemed like a radical shift, it actually just abstracted the old system down to something similar, but that scaled more easily to more situations.

The 3rd edition system introduced a new problem (or, conversely, made apparent a problem that was already there) -- if your Reflex save represents your ability to get out of the way of a damaging effect before it hits you, how is it any different from your Armor Class, which represents your ability to dodge an attack to keep it from hitting you? Plus, 3rd edition also has true skill checks -- the question of when to use a Balance check versus a Reflex save is a real issue that, while discussed in some depth in the 3.5 edition Player's Handbook, is kind of obnoxious. If you have a high Balance or Tumble skill and you're actively trying to duck out of the way of something, why can't you make the skill check instead of the Reflex save, and why would you need some kind of feat to make it work? There's a game balance issue involved, of course, but the real problem comes from the fact that there are two different stats in the game that are attempting to describe the same thing.

Likewise, having a blurred distinction between Reflex Saves and Armor Class defense makes the action in combat stranger than it needs to be. Specifically, one-on-one effects are usually performed with a "to hit" roll -- the fighter taking a swing at an opponent, the wizard firing a ray at an enemy, etc. -- the attacker makes the roll against a set defense. Area effects, however, are performed with a "Reflex save" roll -- the defender makes a roll to avoid getting whacked by the effect. Though the actions being simulated are symmetric, the mechanics are completely opposite. Why not just have the wizard making the area attack make a "to hit" roll against the defenses of the folks within the area being targeted?

And that seems to be exactly what the folks writing the Star Wars Saga Edition asked themselves. By turning the three saving throws into Defenses and merging Armor Class (or in the case of Star Wars "Defense") and Reflex together into a Reflex Defense, they seem to have taken a big step to fixing this problem, and to making every combatant an active participant in combat whether they are making one-on-one attacks or throwing around fireballs.

This setup isn't perfect for D&D, though. Firstly, this method de-emphasizes armor immensely -- after a certain level your Reflex bonus from your class levels is going to dwarf any armor bonus you might get from equipment. For Star Wars this is fine -- almost no one in the setting wears armor and the Talents provided for wearing armor give enough of a reason for continuing to wear armor while not giving the armor wearers too much of an advantage. In "standard" D&D, armor needs to be much more important. Fighters should be the best class for combat, and that means having the best physical Defense (be that Armor Class or Reflex Defense) as well as the most hit points and best combat abilities. This needs to be taken into account if a system like this is put into D&D (though this would make a great variant for a Conan-style D&D game).

A second consideration is that the Star Wars method of improving defenses isn't a D&D-ish way of improving defenses. The Star Wars game proposes a simple +1 per character level bonus to all defenses across the board, with an additional +2 bonus based on which character class you have. This is a great, simple idea that works for Star Wars, but it dilutes the differences among classes. Additionally, this makes defense scale INCREDIBLY quickly -- a 10th level character would have over 20 for all of his defenses. This just doesn't feel right for D&D -- classes in D&D should have different feels. A more granular approach to defense improvement seems to me like it would be needed to keep D&D feeling like D&D instead of like an action movie. A fix might be to use +1/2 level for a primary defense and a +1/3 level for the secondary defenses of the class. This would keep defenses lower in general, which given a good mechanic for armor would keep the feel of D&D while simplifying the defense mechanics, though of course I haven't tried anything like this in play yet, so I'm not sure how well it would actually work in practice.

Star Wars Saga Edition

There's a new preview for the upcoming Star Wars Saga Edition RPG up at Wizards of the Coast's website. This one's all about the rules changes to make droids viable player characters in this edition.

I think this is a good approach -- making droid a "race" in the game rather than coming up with a bunch of exceptions to the standard rules to make droids usable as PCs. The description given at the website seems to be a combination of the warforged character traits (from the D&D Eberron setting) mixed with some new rules specifically for the Star Wars setting (such as Ion weapons, the ability to reallocate their skill training, their "rest" requirements). I especially like that droids get to use Force Points. Since Force Points are an abstract "Drama Point" mechanic in the game, not allowing droids access to these points limits their capabilities as a PC. Plus, it makes little sense -- R2 was one of the luckiest characters in the whole movie series. Without having access to the Force Points mechanic, someone playing an R2-like droid character couldn't hope to even come close to replicating the little guy's performance.

I wish that droids could be Jedi, though. I know that's a limitation of the Star Wars universe (after all, they're not alive, so they can't have any "midichlorians" running through their system), but still. The image of a golden protocol droid in Jedi robes completely amuses me for some reason.

A number of folks have been looking at these previews as indications of what may be coming up for a new "Fourth Edition" of Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not so convinced. I think some of these rules changes may make it in, but a lot of these changes are just to make the d20 system feel more like Star Wars. It seems like now, 5 years after this whole "d20 Star Wars" experiment got started, Wizards is finally making the system fit the setting. That's a good thing in my mind, but there's no indication that what works to make d20 more "Star Wars"-like would also work to make d20 more "Dungeons and Dragons"-like. Time will tell, I suppose.