Ideas in Retrospect: Two Good and One Bad

A very quick follow up on three ideas I've mooted on the blog, two of which have worked well, and one that has just fallen by the wayside.

Crucibles (good): The idead of building the campaign in phases with big, showpiece adventures to move between phases is a really solid idea. I highly recommend it.

XP for Magic Items (good): When the PCs exhaust a limited use magic item (potion, scroll, wand - but definitely not potions of healing, or scrolls that get added to a spellbook), they should get a small XP award (50 XP each feels good). Be sure to tell the players this - the major advantage of this approach is that it encourages them to actually use their items!

Removing Gods Entirely (bad): I've found that this just doesn't really work, and closes off more creative options than it opens. Some settings (Dark Sun) may work well that way, if built from the ground up, but I wouldn't recommend it as a default.

Monasteries and Nunneries in Terafa

I mentioned late last year that I was working on a post about this topic. It hasn't really come together, so I'll quickly just post the highlights.

When reading "The Pillars of the Earth", one of the things that it made a big deal of was that travellers could present themselves at a monastery and request lodgings - strictly for a single night, and they'd be expected to offer some sort of a gift on parting, but it was there.

Adapting that for D&D gives a neat tie for the Monk class - if we assume that the setting is dotted with monasteries, but posit that these are much more like armed camps than the historical equivalent, we get a nice bit of D&D flavour without too much changed. In a "Points of Light" setting that makes a lot of sense - the isolated tavern on the road actually would be horribly vulnerable, but an armed outpost of martial artists?

In Terafa, then, I will be placing such outposts fairly frequently. Some of these will be men-only, some women-only (hence monasteries and nunneries), and some mixed sex. Additionally, I'm inclined to divorce these orders from the religious aspect that was the case historically. Instead, monasteries and nunneries will be engaged in a quest to protect and retrieve lost lore following the Upheaval - a great event about three hundred years ago that shattered a lot of things.

Or something like that. It still needs some work, but as I said, it hasn't fully come together yet.

Audio Quality is King

Over the last year huge numbers of groups have moved their games online. The upshot of that is that I've suddenly found I'm playing more than I have for some years, and to an extent lamenting the fact that I don't have time for more games - it turns out that it's super fun.

But with the rise of online gaming we have also seen the rise of endless articles about how it should be done. And that's good, except they invariably start in the wrong place - they start with "how to play D&D online", when in fact they should be going for "how to play D&D online".

That is, the articles talk about getting a group together, managing the rules, handling dice rolls, what software to use, and so on. All of which are important, but it's only then, and as an afterthought, that they address the single most important thing.

Audio quality.

The blunt fact is that the second most important thing for a successful online game of D&D (after a good group) is the ability to hear one another clearly. Once you've got that, everything else can be negotiated. Without that, you're stuck.

So invest in the best internet connection you can afford, and the best microphone (and, as a lesser concern, camera) you can afford. Then choose your software package based solely on the metric of audio quality.

You can then build anything you want on top of that foundation, and it will be good. But get that foundation in place first, because audio quality really is king.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

RPGs supplements are generally marketed as being "must have" books for the respective game, without which the game will be somehow incomplete or lacking. The truth, of course, is that they're nothing of the sort. In fact, it very much seems that adding supplements to your game will actively make it worse, and the more supplements you add, the greater the problem. Which is a real shame.

"Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" is a frustrating book. On the one hand, 5e is sorely in need of additional subclasses (in my case, especially for Bards, though I suspect each DM has a different class or classes where that applies), which TCoE adds in abundance. On the other hand, some of the material is troublesome, or just plain bad.

The books is divided into four chapters.

The first chapter deals with character options, and this is where both the best and the worst material resides.

Firstly, the good: this chapter provides additional subclasses for each of the twelve classes in the PHB, and also reprints the Artificer from "Eberron: Rising from the Last War" (along with one additional subclass). This is all good stuff. (I wasn't keen on the additional spells for the new Sorcerer subclasses, but can live with those.)

The flip side is... controversial.

As noted previously, WotC have accepted that there is some problematic material in D&D, and has been making slow but genuine efforts to address that. One of the problems they have identified is that the ability score modifiers for the various races drive them very strongly towards certain classes, while the fixed proficiencies granted likewise stereotype the races. (I'm really not sure I agree on either count, but never mind...)

This book therefore takes steps to redress this, which is something I applaud... in principle. Except that it seems quite apparent that WotC don't really know how to fix the issue, which is embedded quite strongly in the game, and therefore their solution is just to allow players to re-assign those items anywhere they want. Which makes for a massive power-boost across the board, and makes the Mountain Dwarf an extremely appealing choice for all classes.

So it's a noble aim ruined by half-assed execution.

(On the other hand, the book does also give the "Custom Lineage" option for characters like the Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Cowardly Lion. Which is cool.)

The other very odd aspect of this chapter is that each class is given some "Optional Class Features". When I first came to these, I thought they were alternate class features that players could choose instead of existing features to give more customisation, but no. With the exception of the Ranger (probably the weakest class anyway) these are just additional features that the player can either choose to have or not. I'm not entirely sure why they'd choose not to, to be honest. (The book does say they should consult with the DM, but it says it is the player's decision.)

Oh, the chapter also includes a bunch of new feats, some of which are good, some of which suck, and none of which are likely to ever feature in my game. They're okay I guess.

Chapter 2 deals with group patrons. This is fine, but no more than that - did we really need guidance on how to have PCs work for a crime guild, military force, or similar?

Chapter 3 contains more spells and magic items. These are pretty cool. (The highlight are the "Summon X" spells, which are handled extremely well - these finally solve the single biggest problem that dragged 3e down. I very much approve.)

Chapter 4 provides fifty pages of miscellaneous 'stuff' for the DM. Again, this is fine but didn't hugely impress. The only thing that I really liked was the rules for Sidekicks, which are reprinted and expanded from the "Essentials Kit". By contrast, the twenty or so pages given over to puzzles were largely a waste of paper.

And that's that. Given the price point of $50 and the page count of 192 pages (and the slightly lower text density than the comparable "Xanathar's Guide to Everything"), this book really needed to be stellar to justify the value proposition. And it isn't that. On the other hand, if you can get a really good discount, are happy to ruthlessly ban a lot of the material that is there, you might be able to justify it.

For me, I'm frustrated by this book, rather disappointed with large parts of it (and especially the botched but very important changes to races), and frankly quite glad that I'm not DMing in an environment where I have to deal with players who would expect to be able to use it. Because I have little doubt that, used as a whole and as-is, it would make the game actively worse.

I've also reached a point where I'm done with WotC's player-facing supplements for 5e - both "Xanathar's Guide" and "Tasha's Guide" have fallen far short of the mark. The monster-focused books are likewise probably going to be something I skip unless they happen to be strongly-themed on something that appeals. That just leaves the occasional storyline to buy into (but mostly not), and possibly some of the settings - I'll at least look at any book on Eberron, Spelljammer (but absolutely not "Planejammer"), Ravenloft, or Dark Sun. I find it oddly disheartening to have come to that position, especially for an edition I actually very much enjoy, but there it is.