Gaming in 2023

2023 has been a quiet year for gaming. It is the first year in more than three decades when I have bought no physical RPG product at all, it has seen me running what I expect to be my final ever campaign, and I'm reaching a point now where I suspect I'm more or less just done - looking forward I see the prospect of less gaming ahead rather than more. (Even in the quiet times in the past, there was always an expectation and a hope that they'd come to an end. This time, I'm not sure I have either.)

The "Isles of Dread" campaign continues to go well. I had expected it to come to an end this year, but for various reasons that hasn't happened. I expect it to conclude some time in the first half of 2024, but I guess we'll see.

I purchased a single physical RPG product - near the end of the year I saw "Phandelver and Beyond" at a 39% discount, which was enough to justify I buy. I haven't read it yet, so can't comment on the content.

Despite that, this year did see me reading a few things: "Tome of Beasts III" (PDF) and the matching "Lairs" book (I recommend the first; the second not so much), "Paranormal Power" (PDF), and the new D&D Starter Set (avoid - get the original if you can). I also read one of the versions of the d6 "Star Wars" game, which was interesting for a number of reasons.

I also purchased a number of classic D&D PDFs - a complete set of "Spelljammer", and the beginnings of a set of "Dark Sun". I had intended to read these, but just never found the time.

Looking forward, I don't foresee too many more purchases. I've more or less decided against the 2024 Core Rules Update unless something signficantly changes (or they publish in PDF). I do expect to receive the "Tales of the Valiant" PDFs at some point in the year, though in hindsight I probably shouldn't have backed that Kickstarter. And I expect to complete my set of "Dark Sun" PDFs at some time.

As I said, it has been a quiet year. I expect 2024 to be quieter still, but I guess we'll see. This won't be my final post on this blog, but it's possible it might be my final end-of-year roundup.

Two Rules (and a secret third rule)

I basically have two rules when it comes to deciding who gets to play at my table:

1. You have to want to be there. If you'd rather be away doing something else, please go and do that thing. If you're only here because your boyfriend/girlfriend/parent/other dragged you along, please be elsewhere (and for that other person: please go and work on your relationship elsewhere!). But in terms of race, sex, sexuality, religion, or any other category... I don't care.
2. By your actions, both in-character and out-of-character, you need to make the game more enjoyable for all present, not less so. It's fine for your character to be a jerk, as long as they're an entertaining jerk. And intra-party conflict is likewise fine, as long as it's all in good fun. But as soon as it stops being fun, I expect it to stop.

And the secret third rule:

If you're not going to make it, you must let people know. You don't need to say why, but you do need to say. Pretty much the only exception to this is if someone ended up in the hospital - otherwise, we live in a world of ubiquitous communications, so I expect you to use them.

Isles of Dread at Year's End 2023

I had expected "Isles of Dread" to run to completion this year, but for various reasons that has not happened. The party are now most of the way through Part Three (of four), and have reached 4th level (of an expected 5). I fully expect the campaign to come to an end reasonably early in 2024, assuming we resume at all, marking the end of the final campaign with this group.

In truth, it's probably just as well that the party haven't hit Part Four yet - actually writing that part of the adventure was one of the items on my to do list for my Christmas holiday last year... and my February holiday, Easter, Summer... And, of course, it remains on my to do list.

The campaign has been running smoothly. That's probably to be expected, as we're fairly expert in these things by now. The only thing particularly of note is that one of the characters took a Feat for the first time... but that has made very little real difference to things.

I have learned a number of things from this, one of which is that using random tables to fill in minor encounters is largely pointless at a home table - the procedural stuff is invisible to the players, and makes very little difference to the DM, so why bother. Random encounters are therefore best used in some sort of Tension Pool approach, where they serve to push the PCs to keep moving forward rather than just wasting time.

And that's basically all there is to say about that. It's fine, it's ongoing, and hopefully it will come to a successful end soon.

A Do-over for Dark Sun

Unless something very significant changes, WotC are never going to touch Dark Sun again. Indeed, until someone stepped in and ordered a change, the "Spelljammer" adventure was intended to drop the entire setting into a black hole, ending it definitively. On the one hand, I understand that position, as Dark Sun has some seriously problematic areas and I can see why WotC don't want to wade into that (especially after the controversies of the last couple of years). On the other hand, it's rather disappointing. Or maybe not, given what they did with Ravenloft and Spelljammer...

Anyway, this has given a certain license to the fans of the setting: if it's never going to be revisited, there's now a freedom to do what you want with it. And, indeed, the door is presumably open for someone to do a "Faded Star" setting (or whatever) being a near-clone of the setting. And, indeed, that's one of the things I've been gradually noodling over in the back of my mind.

If I were redoing Dark Sun, how would I start?

First up, I'd keep the basic premises: it's a post-apocalyptic setting, and the damage is unequivocably caused by the actions of man. The survivors are left ekeing out difficult lives, with the few remaining cities being ruled by vicious, magically-infused tyrants and their servants.

I would, however, get rid of outright slavery from the setting. There's no need for it - the tyrants can rule by fear, their servants can demand a monopoly on the use of force (and magic), and there can be all manner of secret police and other informants making it extremely difficult for the regular folk to revolt effectively.

I would include a Free City, but that's also in dire straits - the recent death of the tyrant has left them without a vast amount of their magical protection, the nearby cities are all determined to wipe them out to show an example, there's vast civil unrest... basically, it's free but might be better off if it were not.

I would probably remove psionics from the setting. It was a nice idea in 2nd Ed, but it's probably a complication the setting can do without.

I would also, without a doubt, remove all of the classic Tolkien-esque species from the setting. No "new takes" on elves, dwarves, and halflings. I would instead enhance the roles played by the more exotic species, the tieflings and dragonborn, and then include a number of species specific to the setting: some sort of insect-folk (thri-kreen and maybe scorpionfolk), lizardfolk, goliaths, and so on. It's a very different setting, so enforce a range of different options.

I think defiling and preserving is probably the most important aspect of the setting, but it wasn't terribly well handled in the 2nd Ed rules. Instead, defiling should be an option available to all casters at the time of casting that will make their spells more powerful, but which will taint the user and blight the world. And at least some magic items would make use of defiling magic, with the more powerful the item the more likely this is.

Of course, the survival aspect is extremely important to the setting. That's relatively easy to address with two house rules: firstly, no magic can create potable water or edible food; secondly, any extra-planar magical storage will destroy any potable water or edible food placed inside. (There are a few more details than this, but those are the most important fixes.)

And the final aspect that is extremely important is the absence of gods. That means no Clerics or Paladins or other users of divine magic. (Druids and Rangers are fine, as users of Primal magic, and the servants of the tyrants are now best modelled as Warlocks.) There may or may not (probably not) be other classes to fill in some of the resulting gaps.

And that, more or less, is it. There is then a lot of working out the details required, but that's a topic for other posts (or not).

Meddling and Capricious

Over the last few years I have been reading quite a lot of books about Greek myth - Stephen Fry's "Mythos", "Heroes", and "Troy" trilogy; Jennifer Saint's "Elektra" and now "Ariadne". One of the things that has become quite apparent in these, but for whatever reason hadn't quite made its mark on me previously, was that the Greek gods are not at all benign (which I knew) but are also very active in the world.

Much of the action in these various stories comes about because one or more of the gods have taken some action, propelling mortals in various ways. When thwarted or insulted the gods proceed to punish mortals in interesting and vicious ways.

But, also: very often, the gods have competing and mutually-exclusive rules, so the mortals in question are just stuck. (For example, in "Elektra" Cassandra finds herself in a position where she has sworn a vow of chastity to Apollo and then finds herself facing sexual advances from Apollo. Whatever she does, she's going to be punished - rebuf him and anger the god; don't and break her vow and anger the god.)

The Greek gods have appeared in D&D in many different iterations, and while D&D has now moved away from including real-world religions it still has a instead the Greek-adjacent mythology in "Mythic Odysseys of Theros". However, for whatever reason D&D has never really incorporated that meddling and capricious nature of the gods in the game. And that despite it being a prime source of adventure motivations. Which all seems like rather an oversight.

That said, maybe it's something they didn't want to incorporate because of fears of DMs using it as license to themselves be meddling and capricious. There's definitely a fine line there. But maybe it's worth looking at again.

Inherent Traits

One of the things I noted while reading "The Fall of Númenor" was a statement by Tolkien that each of the peoples of Middle Earth had certain inherent traits - Elves by their nature were undying but would also eventually be drawn to the Sea and away from the world; Men by contrast were mortal in nature and also bound to the world. Indeed, that was at the heart of the Fall - the kings became obsessed with death, and in particular with avoiding it.

Of course, D&D has spent the last several years grappling with much the same issues, but with the opposite conclusions - as far as is possible it has now shifted away from having any sort of inherent traits associated with the species, and instead allows anyone to be anything. Which makes a certain amount of sense for a game - ideally you don't want your PCs to be unnecessarily constrained.

And yet... the consequence of this that I've been grappling with myself is why there are all the various non-human races at all then? After all, if anyone can be anything, and if none of the species have inherent traits, aren't they all just flavours of human? And if they're all just flavours of human, shouldn't they just be human?

I don't have any great conclusion here, except to note that I found it interesting. I'll be thinking on this some more, no doubt.

Settings and Adventures

I've been thinking on D&D Classics recently, the various PDFs of old D&D materials from past editions. As I've reflected before, back in the day I made some mistakes in my purchasing - I should have skipped a great many of the rulebooks and splatbooks, and not dabbled in so many settings, and instead gone deep into a few chosen settings and bought more adventure modules. D&D Classics obviously offers a way to redress some of that.

Earlier this year, once the OGL fiasco was cleared, I bought up the remaining Spelljammer PDFs to complete my collection of that setting. I've now started gradually collecting the Dark Sun PDFs, and then I intend to invest in a set of the Ravenloft 2nd Edition books (unlike the other settings, Ravenloft had a really big presence in 3e, but I'm not going to bother with that).

I also intend to purchase a bundle of the Historical supplements, as those are regarded as being surprisingly good, and then a smattering of 1st Edition (and a few 2nd Edition) adventures - by no means a complete set, but those items that are regarded as being especially good.

But all of that is a long (ish) term project - I've had no time to read any of the Spelljammer materials, so I'm in no hurry to collect the rest. And, of course, if I'm not actually playing...

Is It Over Already?

For various reasons, we haven't met for a game for more than a month now. And, with Christmas now only four weeks away, it seems likely that we may not meet again this calendar year - certainly not this week or next, and almost certainly not the final week before Christmas.

But the campaign was also left in a bit of an odd position, where it isn't ideally placed for a long break - there was something of a cliffhanger in place, but also some heavier lore in play than we've used recently.

All of which adds up to a distinct possibility that the campaign may have fizzled out, and we might not get back to it.

And since this is the final campaign for this group (which is even more true if it has fizzled), and since there is no signs of my being able to get together any sort of new group, there's a distinct possibility that I've now played my final game, and I didn't even know it.

I guess we'll see, firstly in the next couple of weeks, and then really early in the new year.

The Unmaking of the Foundations of the World

I've been musing on a part of a setting. It's probably not going anywhere, but here's a basic concept I'm thinking on...

There's a supposed Golden Age, in which mortals dwelt largely in peace, guided by mostly benevolent gods. Then there is a tumult, as another band of mortals arrive bringing their own, mostly benevolent, gods with them. The two pantheons battle in a war that threatens to wreak utter destruction.

In time, the wisest and most powerful (or, perhaps, the most foolish and most powerful) of mortals band together and drive out all the gods - in their strife they have ceased to be benevolent protectors and have become destroyers.

But, alas, in doing so, those most powerful of mortals have unmade the very foundations of the world. And now, unbalanced, it all collapses into entropy.

There is scope, in this paradigm, for those foundations to be remade - all it would take is for a mortal to be sufficiently exposed to the pieces of them, and to bring them together. Unfortunately, that exposure renders the one engaging in it both more powerful and even-more inhuman in aspect. They become mutated monsters, and increasingly unfit to bring together the remaining foundations and thus to rebuild the world.

Anyway, that's what I've got so far. Though one problem with it is that it's fairly key to the setting, and therefore something the PCs would ideally know about, but I'm also keen not to have the gods (or rather, their absence) be a major element in gameplay - they're simply not present, the end.

So it's  bit of a tricky one, really.

What Would That Look Like?

I find myself stuck between two unsatisfactory notions. On the one hand, I'm very strongly disinclined to run another campaign with the current group, for a number of reasons not all of which I've laid out here. On the other hand, though, I really don't want to accept that this is an end of gaming for me.

I also find myself dissatisfied with the various campaign ideas, adventure notions, and other such things that have sprung to mind. So, in an attempt to make some headway, this post is an exercise in trying to work out what a satisfactory future for me for gaming might look like.

First up, any future campaign would need to be something quite different. I don't actually mean moving away from D&D, or even 5e, in this regard. But recent campaigns have been constrained by a 1-hour time slot and/or by being run online, and in both cases the campaign has therefore been extremely constrained. Essentially, the game has been boiled right down to the core experience and nothing else, with very little by way of social interaction or even exploration. I'd need that to change.

Tied in with that would need to be a change of format. As noted, sessions would necessarily need to be more than an hour in length, and gaming would need to be face-to-face. This creates serious issues, but I'm not going to dwell on those right now.

So...

Some sort of different campaign with a stronger social and exploration aspect than has been the case previously. I think an intent, once again, to run from 1st level up to something a good bit higher - 10th level at a minimum; perhaps more.

That, in turn, suggests either a home base for the campaign, or at least a fairly strong hub to which the PCs return again and again - I'd want them to have a stable core of characters that they regularly interact with. (Or, I suppose, they could take those NPCs with them...)

And I'm, frankly, rather sick of the "BBEG is rising to power, and you have to stop him" campaign structure. Let's have something more positive - the PCs have the opportunity to build something that will make life better, rather than fighting to avoid it becoming worse.

That's what I have so far.

Spelljammer: Beyond the Clouds

Noodling on another Spelljammer campaign premise:

The PCs are the last remnants of a dying civilisation - they are a completely cosmopolitan group of survivors whose history abruptly starts when their ancestors woke from a strange fugue with no memory of how they came to be there, but with a variety of skills well trained from long use. The world on which they live is a ruined wasteland, such that over the generations since all the other tribes have dwindled and died out, and the PCs are close to all that is left.

The world is bereft of a sun, with the sky permanently covered with thick cloud cover. The dominant feature is a broken tower made of an unknown metal, impossibly strong and impossibly thin.

And then one day a Spelljammer craft descents from the clouds and crashes.

Thereafter, the PCs investigate the downed craft, fight off some monsters, and come into possession of a damaged but workable ship, and a ship with a single ghostly survivor (to provide useful exposition).

Thereafter, they head into space to discover what is out there, and start unravelling the mysteries of how their ancestors came to be on Cinder, why they suddenly disappeared, and the nature of these towers. And, of course, there is the issue that they are being pursued - there is something about the survivors of Cinder that makes them of great interest to many less-than-friendly forces.

I think this one has legs... and yet I'll probably never run it. I can see a mid-section involving a tour of the Spheres, which should be good. I can see a finale involving a showdown with their previous captors. It's just linking those up that is potentially an issue, but that's workable.

One thing of note: in this campaign the PCs wouldn't have backgrounds, nor speak any language other than Common, due to the nature of their culture. I would therefore be inclined to instead let each PC create a custom not-background - pick two skill and two tool proficiencies, plus either the Skilled or Tough feat.

An Interesting Pattern

I was trawling back through old posts, and I noted some from early in the current campaign indicating that it has not been all I had hoped for (which is true).

What I find interesting there is that this is a campaign following on from "The Mists of Lamordia", which was a multi-year campaign that did go about as well as I had hoped. Further, with my previous group I ran a great "Eberron Code" campaign, and then had two subsequent campaigns that I felt fell short for one reason or another ("Imperial Fist" and "Dust to Dust"). And with the group before that I had a great time with "The Shackled City", and then found that we just couldn't get "Savage Tide" off the ground.

So it rather looks like there is a pattern at work there - one great campaign, and then it's time to form a new group!

Sticking the Landing

Funnily enough, the end of a campaign tends to be one of the first things I have established during preparation, at least in conceptual terms - although the route to get there is often vague, the campaign generally has an "all roads lead to Rome" feel to it. (Right up until the PCs decide they really don't want to go to Rome, that is!)

And yet, actually bringing that end to life can be tricky, because by and large I haven't gotten everything written down by the time the campaign starts, and generally don't find the time later to work it all through.

In my opinion, a good ending to a campaign needs to conclude most or all of the lingering plot threads of the campaign, but should also serve as a neat capstone, summing up all the themes that have brought us to this point.

In the case of the "Isles of Dread" campaign, then, the finale needs to:

• Draw the PCs into a focal point of the ancient battle between the cults of Elemental Evil.
• Allow the PCs to gain their revenge on the pirate captain who marooned them here.
• Allow the PCs to find their way away from the Isles.
• Address the themes of isolation and imprisonment that we've been facing thus far.

That's all a tall order. And I now have to write it up, in all of 6,000 words!

Next on the Chopping Block

Apparently, there's a big 'event' adventure coming soon for D&D to mark the transition to the 2024 revised ruleset. This adventure features Vecna as the BBEG, and the smart money seems to be on it featuring some sort of quasi-reboot of the setting - something that will give WotC opportunity to jettison any and all of the accumulated lore they want to be rid of (especially any problematic elements), while also allowing them scope to keep anything they want to retain. And then they can sell us all the books all over again.

The big problem with this approach is that 'problematic' is inherently a moving target, so any notion that this might be a one-and-done thing is almost certainly a fool's hope. In particular, there are three elements that they're going to retain that are very likely to come under fire at some point:

• The use of any non-human intelligent species. We're increasingly coming to the point of view that orcs are inherently stand-ins for people of colour and dwarves for Jewish folk. The same analysis generally hasn't been done for other species, but is readily applicable. The problem there being that if orcs are indeed PoC then depicting them as anything other than human is inherently and unavoidably problematic, and needs to stop.
• Religion. D&D has a big problem in that, on those occasions when it features religion at all, the benign religions lift liberally from Christianity while malign religions are based far more often on non-Christian religions. The problem there is obvious. There are also big issues with cultural sensitivity when religion is concerned, as for much of our world culture and religion remain far more intertwined than in the US and the UK.
• Alignment. Basically, having a gam prescribe what is and is not 'good' is massively problematic.

Those are three fairly huge elements of the game, such that removing them would massively and fundamentally alter it. Indeed, removing the first, in particular, may be a death knell for the game as we know it. And yet, those are arguments I suspect we'll be fighting in a few years.

Bottom line: a quasi-reboot to remove all the problematic stuff may buy a few years, but not many. And, worse, it sets a precedent for how to deal with them that I'd really they rather not set.

Jedi Quest

I'm very much enjoying "Ahsoka". I'll review it over on the other blog once it's done. However, in the meantime, it has given me quite a bit of food for thought regarding the best use of Jedi in RPGs.

Basically, I'm inclined to think that Jedi are poorly served by treating them as just another PC type in a mixed party, or putting them in the standard RPG backdrop. Much as I hate to admit it, FFG may well have been right to make Jedi the focus of an entirely separate game from other PC types.

I'm inclined to think that Jedi are best served with a fairly standard 'quest' approach to their missions. That may be obvious - they are Jedi Knights after all. "Go find the secret master who has been in exile for decades"; "go find the first Jedi temple"; "explore ancient Dathomiri temples to unearth a hyperspace route to another galaxy entirely".

Of course, a good quest never runs quite as you might expect it to, and the object of the quest may well prove to be quite different from the one you set out with. And, of course, the real goal is always enlightenment. But that's all easily filled in.

And it's all great fodder for an RPG. Just not the same fodder as "Andor" or "Rogue One", and that's good too.

The Joy of One-Shots

I recently had word that a friend is returning to the area (ish), which raises the possibility of getting the band back together somewhat. Which is all great news.

That said, it remains my position that I just don't have the ability to commit to any sort of campaign play at the present time - the regular chunk of time turned over to gaming, on either a weeknight or at the weekend, is just not something I can commit.

But there is the possibility of getting together for an occasional one-shot game, potentially taking a chunk of time on one Saturday or Sunday afternoon for that purpose.

Which is no bad thing - we had a number of successful one-shots back in the day. They have the key advantage that you get different people at the table, you get to try out different systems and different characters, and they can be a lot of fun. Notable good times were a "Hunter: the Reckoning" game, a "Star Wars" mirror universe one-shot, Numenera, and Star Trek. (That last, in particular, is something I'd like to try again - and is something ideally suited for one-shots.)

They're not the same. But they're good in a different way.

And What About "Phandelver and Beyond"

At the outset of this year there was one book I was interested in: the revised and expanded Phandelver campaign. In truth, I think I was never likely to actually use this, since I've now run "Lost Mine" twice and that makes up the core of the adventure. But I was very interested to see what they did with it.

But if I'm now running my last ever campaign, does it make sense to spend the better part of £50 on a book I'm never going to use?

On the other hand, there have been other books I've skipped for one reason or another and then come to regret, and in some of those cases buying the book later proved to be an expensive venture. And it is, just about, possible I might come back to this one...

I'm not sure. But I think my answer, for now, is to wait and see - if I somehow find myself starting up a new game, or if it suddenly drops in price by about a third, I think I'll buy in. Otherwise, I'll leave it. For now.

Latest On the New Books

As time goes on, it looks more and more like the 2024 revision of the game is going to be a tightening up of the engine, but without any of the more invasive changes that had been proposed - 5e Essentials rather than 5.5e (and certainly not 6e!). All of which is to the good, I think, mostly because I hadn't like the sound of any of those bigger changes.

And yet, I find myself torn on the new books.

The major reason for this is that if I am indeed running my final campaign, there's no good reason to spend the money, and I'm out of shelf space anyway.

But on the other hand, this would be the first version of the game for which I don't have the key books, and if they are indeed an improvement...

Mostly, though, I'm lamenting the fact that they'll almost certainly never be released on PDF. If that were done, I'd buy them sight-unseen. Without that, I'm inclined not to bother.

(And yes, it does need to be PDF specifically. Other electronic formats, even those that are supposedly "better", are useless to me.)

A Decision Confirmed

We had yet another cancellation of the game this week, hot on the heels of a cancellation last week. It is, once again, proving increasingly difficult to get together.

Which once again confirms that my decision was the right one: this is the last campaign I'm going to run in the current environment. Which almost certainly means it is the final campaign I will run for a great many years - possibly ever.

The 35th anniversary of my first game has recently passed. Sadly, it looks like it's going out with a whimper.

Deep Lore

So, here's the premise for my Spelljammer adventure that I'm definitely not going to run:

The characters are each the most famous hero of their respective worlds - they are created as 15th level characters (and can be basically anyone or anything). The players are each encouraged to come up with their own legend, with the one caveat that they have absolutely no knowledge of one another.

Some time after their deaths, they find themselves gathered together in a dark and dismal temple, where they are approached by the local priest, who presents them with their not-at-all-railroaded quest: the priest's patron wants to know the secret hidden in "The Nested Sphere", and has provided a suitable Spelljammer vessel for their use.

As incentive to drive them, their patron has erased their legends from history. If they refuse to help, they will forever be forgotten. If they do as asked, their legends will be restored. Naturally, for legendary heroes the worst possible fate is to be forever forgotten.

The Nested Sphere is an unborn Crystal Sphere, and as such is protected by the Ban of the Unborn, which states that "deities are prohibited from influence, contact, or dealings with preincarnate souls in any  fashion whatsoever." As such, their patron can tell them nothing about it. But a broker on the Rock of Bral has something that might be of interest.

From there we go on a tour of the Spheres (this being a classic Spelljammer campaign, not the newfangled abomination). So off to a variety of worlds we go...

Eventually we head to The Spelljammer, and then off to the Nested Sphere, wherein lies a well-guarded library in which a hidden tome holds the secret by which a lesser divinity can ascend to the rank of Overgod. Naturally, Vecna would be most interested in this...

And then comes the showdown - face off against the God of Secrets and suffer being forgotten, or give over the tome, restore your legends... and doom the future?

"Isles of Dread" - a Lesson Learned

When setting up the "Isles of Dread" campaign, one of the things that I did was set up several key adventure areas, and then add several other small islands that didn't have fixed content - the idea being that as the characters travelled to one of these islands the content would be rolled randomly and then used.

Unfortunately, I've found that this doesn't really work - the randomly generated encounters aren't really interesting enough in their own right to justify their inclusion, and the random generator is largely transparent from the other side of the screen. Which means that from the players' perspective they're mostly seeing a number of fairly dull encounters playing out.

Bottom line: random generators like this are probably not a bad thing in published adventures, especially ones likely to be run more than once (like "Lost Mine of Phandelver"), but for a home campaign they're probably not ideal. (Except, of course, for a big book of random encounters - that has use for a time-starved DM. But don't write your own!)

About AI Art

In recent weeks, both DriveThru RGP and WotC have issued statements concerning the use of AI-generated art in their products. In both cases, they're taking a line against the use of such things.

Which is all fair enough - it's their prerogative to set their own policies as they see fit.

However, I do find myself wondering if it's at all worthwhile. The truth is that "AI" art is here to stay, and will only get better with time. Before too long we will reach a point where it is simply indistinguishable from anything that a human artist can generate. At which point unprincipled actors are likely simply to pass off the AI art as their own work, and nobody will be able to tell the difference.

I think this issue of AI art is really only a piece of the bigger issue of automation in general, which is likely to massively shake up the world of work over the next couple of decades, and which requires a cultural shift that moves way beyond RPGs themselves. Ultimately, I suspect we'll need to move to a paradigm where people create products because they want to do so, and not because they expect to be paid for them - because, simply put, it's likely the ability to get paid for them (and many other things) is likely to go away... along with the ability of people to pay for them in the first place.

Another Cancellation

Our game this afternoon had to be cancelled at short notice. We're now going to attempt to meet on Wednesday afternoon instead, with a view to shifting to Wednesdays as a regular slot for a while. We'll see if that works any better.

All of which amounts to another good reason to make the current campaign our last.

Takes Me Back

Apparently the sense of smell is the one most closely tied to memory. Events of the last weekend have served to remind me of that fact (or factoid).

Amongst her many activities of the weekend, LC repainted our downstairs bathroom. The skirting boards, doorframe, and other edging obviously needed a completely different white paint from the walls, and said paint was cleaned with white spirit, or its modern equivalent.

But the thing is that when I first started painting miniature figures, way back in the days when the models were made of lead (before they became pewter, never mind plastic!), the recommended paint was oil-based enamels. Those were, of course, cleaned using white spirit.

And so for much of the weekend I found myself fondly reminded of those days. And not so fondly reminded of having hundreds of unpainted little figures lying around waiting for my attentions.

(I still have no intention of starting again. Those days are over.)

The Jump

Apparently, the upcoming Planescape boxed set will include an adventure that includes a low-mid level section and then a section at 17th level. Characters will enjoy a level jump just before that final section of the adventure.

I should note that I have absolutely no objection to the use of a level jump within an adventure, and it's good to see WotC finally publishing some high-level material. I just with they were better at it - ever since 3e they've had difficulties in both providing such support and in making that support worth having.

Speaking for myself, I've never used a level jump. I'm not particularly a fan - I'd generally prefer to start at a higher level than build in a jump, and given that the game just runs better at lower levels anyway I'm inclined not to bother.

That said, there is one time I should have used a level jump. This was a "Roman-esque" campaign from back in the day, from sufficiently long ago that I didn't name all my campaigns. The campaign had been running for some time, with the characters reaching level 8 or so, before life events led to me bringing it to a premature end. Unfortunately, the planned end basically involved a Godzilla attack (actually a Hellfire Wyrm, from back when that was a singular monster of extremely high CR, rather than just another type of monster).

The planned end of the campaign expected the PCs to have reached 20th level and acquired a number of powerful magical items. The actual end featured wildly under-powered PCs with a few good items, and thus ended in a TPK. (There was actually something thematically interesting there - sometimes the apocalypse doesn't wait for the heroes to be ready to face it. But as a game experience it wasn't great.)

In hindsight, I should have built in a level jump, set the PCs up so that they weren't quite ready to face the beast, and gone from there. But, alas, I just didn't think of it at the time.

Combos

One of the big issues with D&D has always been the "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" problem, where Wizards get ever-bigger spells as they go up in level while Fighters just get a bit better at whatever they were doing previously. One of the fixes for that was always to give Fighters bizarre and outlandish powers to try to compensate, but that never quite sat right either.

Another fix I've mooted in the past was the notion of combos - the Fighter would have a set of 'basic' attacks that could be used at any time, but by combining them into sequences they could multiply up the effects. So if they first landed "uppercut", they could then use "haymaker", and then finish off with "thundrous smite" to get a knock-out effect.

Well, maybe. There are complexities inherent in all of that.

But that's not the point of this post, because I've said most of this before.

The point of this post is to note that I've made a crucial mistake in my thinking. Originally, I had thought that the Fighter should hit with the various 'steps' in order to qualify for the chain. But the problem with that is that they're very likely to fail at some point, and at the very least have to repeat a step (if not start over). Because combats mostly last four rounds at most, and feature multiple opponents, that makes the chains essentially useless.

My correction is that the Fighter should have to use all the various powers, without needing to hit. And for the powers beyond the first there should probably be at least some effect even on a miss. Once you get to the capstone power in the chain, that probably does require a hit... but should allow for retries if it does fail the first time.

Cancelling Everything

I've recently had a fairly rude awakening. The upshot is that the work game will indeed be coming to an end with the current campaign, regardless of any other considerations. There may, just possibly, be scope for setting up a new game with some (or even all) of the same people, but it needs to be strictly decoupled from work.

The upshot of all of that is that any nebulous plans I may have had for a Spelljammer mini-campaign next have been cancelled.

The Race is On!

The party are currently midway through part three of "Isles of Dread", and are making rapid progress. Meanwhile I've become bogged down again in the writing of part four. There is very little chance I'll make meaningful progress on that over the next few months, and yet that progress is urgently needed to bring the campaign to a successful conclusion.

As the title says, the race is on!

Ewoks

One funny thing I've noticed about every version of the "Star Wars" RPG that I've read (which is all the d6 and d20 versions, but not the FFG ones): they all say that Ewoks are first discovered around the time of the Battle of Endor.

But that's not so.

In "Return of the Jedi", C-3P0 already speaks the language of the Ewoks. True, he notes that it is "a very primitive dialect", but still that means that at some point someone had sufficient contact with the Ewoks to bother placing the details of the language into a droid's translation circuits.

Most likely, that means that there are other colonies of Ewoks, potentially much more integrated colonies of Ewoks, somewhere out there in the galaxy. Or, of course, the Ewoks on Endor could be the last remnant left over from some horrific Sith atrocity from one of the earlier wars in the galaxy, one so long ago that they have been entirely forgotten.

Which would, of course, make it even more tragic when the Rebels' destruction of the second Death Star unleashes ecological devastation on their last remaining homeland.

The Next Game: Another Thought

I suddenly find myself thinking that I'd quite like to try out the upper levels of 5e play. Now, the reality is that I'll never get to play those organically, as I just don't have the time or patience for a multi-multi-year campaign to get there, so it would need to be something designed from the outset for higher level PCs.

I'm currently thinking of a concept where the PCs are each top-tier heroes in their own settings who are pulled together by a mysterious patron to explore some obscure corner of the multiverse. Actually, my initial concept has them as servants of no less a figure than Vecna, the god of evil secrets (and also of the Eye and Hand, and indeed "Stranger Things", fame). In which case, their interest would presumably be in some secret that even the gods are not meant to know.

Which works remarkably well - one of the more interesting bits of obscure 3e lore is that the Bastion of Unborn Souls is literally unknown even to the gods, so it's entirely reasonable to posit that there could be other such secrets. And, of course, if there is a secret redoubt of such antiquity that even gods don't know about it, who can tell what dangers it could hold?

And there's another thought... what if it was a Spelljammer adventure, thus killing two birds with one stone...

Building the World Around the PCs

I should stress at the outset that this isn't an original thought. But very few are, so here it is.

Back in the day, I was a fan of psionics, but in 3e that was a whole new subsystem that had some mental load associated with it. And so one of my policies very often was to offer psionics as an option at the start of the campaign, but if nobody took one of those options then it would be removed from play - there would be no opportunity to take any psionics stuff later. (If someone did take a psionics option, any psionics option, that opened the entire toolbox for everyone from that point onwards.)

Of course, that same option could be applied to everything. And, write large, it can be readily used by the DM for world-building - if one of the PCs is a dwarf then the species and all of their trappings can be added to the world, the clans, the underground kingdoms, and so on and so forth. But if none is, those elements can be omitted to make room for something else.

In theory, that still leaves a nicely diverse world - you potentially have four major species (plus any monster types you want), you probably have arcane and divine magic in some form, and so on. It's just that the world only contains those things that the players have, through their choices, indicated that they are interested in exploring.

The only downside is that the DM can only do limited world-building before kicking off the campaign, since he doesn't know which options the players will select. But that's not necessarily the worst thing, either.

A Lesson in Cardboard

Two years ago I received a belated birthday present of a cardboard 'puzzle' (model) of King's Landing. Over the past few months I have been constructing it, on and off, and finally completed it this morning. It has now taken pride of place in our loft, in lieu of a better place to put it.

But the exercise did give rise to an interesting lesson. The city itself was rather straightforward to construct, involving the assembly of two key buildings and then the addition of several houses. Those houses were of three fixed constructions, but by mixing and matching the details and then scattering the three types you got a more potent effect than they really deserved.

Which, of course, has all sorts of applications to D&D, and especially to map building: pick some key items to really stand out and apply the attention there, and then make up the rest with stock elements that you can mix and match, and adjust the details of, to suit.

That's Why We Game

Today's game was great fun - the party completed their explorations of a downed mind flayer Nautiloid, and after defeating the pilot they proceeded to loot the place. Amongst the treasure was the puissant servitor - a semi-sentient graft that could be attached to a severed arm or wrist to provide a replacement limb.

This then provoked extensive discussions over whether a given character would remove his own limb in order to gain the powers granted by this item. Several other characters offered to help (or 'help'), offering a wide variety of potential options for the approach taken. Cue several minutes of hilarity as the situation played out.

Which all served as a very timely reminder - it is for situations like that that we game. Nothing else can replicate them.

Spelljammer: Twelve Wyrm Crawl

I've been thinking about a theoretical "next campaign" for some time. I'm very much drawn to Spelljammer, but there's an issue with the Eberron/Spelljammer campaign I've been considering: the last two campaigns I have run have had the part lost and having to get home, and this would be a third. And since I ran "Storm King's Thunder", that isn't really an option either.

However, I think I've hit on a suitably silly premise for a short campaign in the silliest of all campaign settings: Twelve Wyrm Crawl.

The premise is that the characters are all friends who have been summoned to the "Deep Dragon Inn" by a mutual friend, who reveals to them that he is dying and that no magic can sae him. So he calls on them to accompany him on one last stupendous adventure: a pub crawl across the spheres through the twelve "Great Wyrm" pubs. And so, off they go!

The campaign from there is mostly a travelogue around the crystal spheres, with all the usual side-quests and other distractions that are likely to arise.

It's nonsense, of course. But given that most campaign premises are, truth be told, little more than a pretext anyway, it should work. And it certainly fits the setting!

Some Progress At Last

I finally got back to making some progress on the remaining parts of the "Isles of Dread" campaign - specifically, I have finished the main campaign map:

It's fair to say it is not as elaborate at the maps I did for "The Mists of Lamordia", largely because this one is entirely hand-drawn rather then done on PC. But, as with the city map of Ludendorf, it reaches the key threshold of being "good enough". And, actually, I think it's a bit better than my previous efforts, and indeed took rather less time than has previously been the case. Which suggests that improvement is being made, albeit slowly and painfully, and from a very low base. But since I have no illusions of ever being anything other than an amateur, it doesn't really matter.

I still have a couple of other maps to produce, plus two player handouts, and then the final part of the campaign to write (about 6,000 words). But it's really good to finally be making progress again!

Gathering the Magic

I see that the Stone of Destiny has started its move from Edinburgh down to England for the coronation. Meanwhile, the Pope has apparently sent splinters of the True Cross, likewise for use in the coronation.

I'm sure there's a D&D plotline there: a new monarch is to be crowned, but this requires that suitable magical regalia be gathered from around the kingdom. But some of the items have fallen into the hands of those seeking advantage. Who is responsible, and what nefarious agenda are they pursuing?

D&D: Honour Among Thieves

I had a window of opportunity on Monday, and so made my way out to see the new D&D movie. I was lucky to catch it - it had already left our local cinema, and none of the other nearby ones had shows I could catch. Luckily the one near my parents' had a couple of showings, which meant I stepped back in time. That said, they've refitted their screens with reclining chairs for all customers, which was a pleasant surprise. And so, I sat down in an almost deserted cinema to watch the film.

And it's okay. It's a perfectly fine film, a diverting way to spend a couple of hours, with the same blend of action and comedy one might expect from a "Guardians of the Galaxy" or recent "Thor" film. The cast were all pretty good, the pacing was good. It was all good.

And almost completely unmemorable. Indeed, almost all of the best bits of the film had already been released, in the form of the trailers, TV spots, and other promotions. What was left was the connecting tissue, which was all fine but was mostly just... there.

Ultimately, my view is... yeah, it's okay.

On the plus side, it isn't the cinematic abomination that was the previous films, so that's a positive. On the other hand, that's not exactly a high bar to reach. And I'm struggling to find a reason to watch this one over, say, watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" again (which is funnier, more action packed, and just generally a bit better on every metric).

Make of that what you will, I guess.

Filling the Gaps

As I've said over on Part Five, I very much enjoyed the final season of "Picard". However, I didn't find it as game-friendly as the first season, so don't have a huge amount to say here, except to note that this now leaves me with three premises for Star Trek campaigns that I might be interested to follow up. Although I should probably note that they're all essentially the same premise...

• I've mentioned my concept for the campaign where the party are the crew of the Enterprise B, in the time between "Generations" and the eventual replacement of the ship with the Enterprise C seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise".
• There's scope for an almost identical campaign featuring the Enterprise F, in the time between the eventual end of the Enterprise E and the start of "Picard".
• And, of course, there is scope for another, almost identical, campaign set after the end of "Picard", with the party being the crew of some other Federation ship as they deal with the aftermath of that one. Though I wouldn't set that one on the Enterprise, as I daresay we're liable to see that again.

All that said, my inclination would be to stick with the Enterprise B concept, largely because your first idea is generally your best. But it's nice to think that there are always possibilities.

Cards

D&D has an awful lot of spells and magic items, but a good character sheet should run to no more than a handful of pages (the fewer the better - a single side would be ideal). But there are various areas where more information would be useful, giving the player a handy reference to what their spells, magic items, and indeed class powers can do - ideally, this should not be the PHB, but rather an extract that shows only the specific items that are relevant to that character.

To that end, I've found spell cards in their various forms extremely useful for 5e. I haven't, as yet, found an equivalently good set of magic item cards - too many of the sets contain far too few of some very common items in favour of showing all the most obscure items in the book. And while cards for class powers do exist, these are even less useful, since so many class powers are adjusted by the character's capabilities. In many ways, the ideal would be the equivalent of the old 4e Character Builder, which generated the appropriate cards, and customised them for the individual character.

Hopefully OneD&D will include this functionality (if D&D Beyond doesn't already!). The downside of that, of course, being that it means buying in to the whole OneD&D ecosystem, which I'm less that keen to do!

Bigger <> Better

A few years ago I read through the rereleased 1st edition of the WEG Star Wars RPG, and was struck by how light and breezy it is. I'm currently running through the final edition of the same game, which pulls together the results of many years of development and expansion, and while it is the same game, and while many of the improvements are nice, as a whole the thing just falls flat.

I found exactly the same thing with Shadowrun, which had an excellent 1st edition, a 2nd edition that made several improvements but also added more 'stuff', then a 3rd edition that became massively complex, and then a 4th edition that changed the underlying ruleset and became, in my opinion, almost entirely unplayable (at least for a newcomer).

The upshot: bigger is not the same as better, and especially in the case of RPG rules it may well be the opposite.

Of course, that mostly restates one of my long-held beliefs: if you cannot present the core of your entire ruleset in a single 250ish-page hardback book, you're doing something wrong.

Completed: Desolation Island

After a break of several weeks for vacation, "Isles of Dread" resumed today with a big showdown with the Survivalist faction. After a hard-fought battle the party emerged victorious, defeating and capturing the Survivalists and driving off the traitor Kellen Son of Kærn. However, in the battle the Survivalists' stores were destroyed, including almost all of the gunpowder supplies.

The party now embark on an exploration of the rest of the Isles in Part Three of the campaign. What mysteries may lie beyond their temporary home? And will Kellen re-emerge to threaten them again?

2023 is not D&D's Year

There is still a long way to go, but right now it is looking like 2023 is not to be D&D's year. The year started with comments from within Hasbro that the brand was under-monetized (meaning they wanted more money for no more investment), coupled with other statements that they were "betting big" on the brand.

WotC then promptly declared war on their own consumer base with the OGL fiasco, leading to an humiliating defeat, a complete reversal, and indeed the release of key parts of their IP under a Creative Commons license.

The second part of their big bets was the D&D movie which, despite positive reviews, appears to have made a fairly sizeable loss. So that's not looking too healthy. (Still, at least it's not the toxic bin fire that was the older movies!)

The upcoming slate of products for 2023 is, frankly, anemic and unimpressive. There's only one that is of even marginal interest... and that interest drops with every etail they reveal.

Meanwhile, the final strand of their big bets are the development of "One D&D" - a massive investment into a Virtual Tabletop just as the end of the pandemic removes the demand for such a thing, and a new version of the game that is looking more and more like "D&D 5e 2nd Edition" - a version of the game that changes a load of mechanics that people were mostly happy with, fails to tackle the underlying issues in a creaking system, and makes a whole bunch of lore changes to pacify people who largely don't play the game, will be mostly oblivious to them, and anyway have no real intention of being appeased.

Frankly, at this point if I were a Hasbro exec, I would be taking a really close look at it, with a view to trying to cut my losses. Because 2023 isn't likely to be a success for the brand, and 2024 ain't looking too hot either.

Character Building and the Three Pillars

Following on from my previous post, one other big change I would make to character creation in D&D (that they definitely won't be making, worse luck) would be to have the character's class determine how they interface with the Combat pillar of the game and everything else about the character (ancestry, feats, proficiencies, even sub-class) determine how the character interface with the Exploration and Social pillars.

The key consequences here are that every character will be useful in combat (which is, frankly, the core experience of D&D) and every character will also be useful outside of combat. Furthermore, this means that you don't ever have to choose between eking out every possible combat bonus or being useful in the social or exploration arenas.

But, as I said, that's definitely not the way they'll be going. Having cleverly identified the three pillars of the game (albeit not actually knowing what one of those is), they've made sure to focus just about everything on one of them.

No More Half-elves?

Apparently, with the move to One D&D, WotC have decided to remove half-elves and half-orcs as 'species' options in their own right - players will be advised to choose whichever of human and elf/orc makes for the closer match for their character, and go with that. (This does have the advantage that it makes half-dwarves, half-halflings, elf-dwarves, or whatever trivially easy to handle.)

On the one hand, I'm not keen on this approach - for all that it's probably driven by their drive to remove problematic material, it feels like they're doing it by erasure of mixed-race folk, which seems rather counter-productive. Plus, of course, every edition of the game that has removed half-orcs has failed abysmally. (And I would prefer not to have orcs as a PC race. But that ship has long since sailed.)

On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that a better approach to mixed species in general would be to introduce "elf heritage" traits alongside each species description, allowing people to mix and match species as they go (and even allow those to be selected later to handle "discovered heritages" during play).

But, actually, I'm now coming to the view that the thing to do with species is to remove it from the mechanical expression of a character entirely. Instead, transfer all the various racial traits (darkvision and the like) into feats/advantages/traits/whatever, and then allow the player to choose from the wider list as they want. The character can then be described as belonging to any of the species (or a mix of any of the species) that exist in the setting.

(Ultimately, I don't think it matters if Gimli has darkvision because of his dwarven heritage, Geralt has darkvision because of his mutations, or Arya has darkvision because of her mystical training - it's the same trait, and all justifications work. And, likewise, one could easily argue that a dwarf who has lived his whole life on the surface may lack darkvision entirely, as it has atrophied with time.)

How Can It End Like This?

I'm finding myself increasingly dissatisfied with my current campaign - I'm convinced that the concept is good, I'm happy with the preparation I've done, and it's actually playing out in an entirely sensible manner given the material. And yet... meh. Something about it just isn't working for me.

I suspect that part of the issue is that the starting phases of D&D 5e are just naturally slow, because the characters are so squishy. And while those stages are also short, that's only true with something approaching a normal play cadence. As it is, we're grinding through week after week of the PCs at level 2, and they're constantly out of their depth. Which is a shame.

(Plus, all my best material is in the third part of the campaign, which kicks off soon. Maybe things will get better?)

But that's all an issue - I'm pretty certain that this is my final D&D campaign, possibly ever and certainly for a very long time. I'd really hoped to go out on a high, but this is really starting to feel like a damp squib. It's just a real shame.

(Indeed, had I known, I would have been better ending after the previous campaign - that one ended very well, and would have made for an ideal capstone. Oh well.)

Paranormal Power

One last review for a while...

I've always been a fan of psionics, at least in principle. And given that two of my favourite settings, Dark Sun and Eberron, were built assuming that psionics are present, I've always found those somewhat lacking in editions that don't have that support - notably including 5e.

So when a Kickstarter for a small psionics book was launched, I decided to jump on it. "Paranormal Power" is the result, which I received in PDF form.

I should note that due to a computer freeze I don't currently have access to the book, so I'm writing this from memory.

This was a short book of ~65 pages, with a decent amount of art. That art was AI-generated in the initial version, though my understanding is that it is in the process of being replaced with human-generated works instead. But lacking a critical eye, my view was that the art was fine - like all RPG art, it does the job, and then my interest ends.

The game material contains all the things you might expect: a new heritage (race), a new class, new subclasses for all the existing classes, some new spells and magic items, and some new monsters. And, crucially, a psionics system and the accompanying powers.

And it's all fine - good, solid material that I would have absolutely no qualms about allowing into any "Level Up" game I was ever to run. It's a really good work.

But...

My one concern with the book is that it very definitely is a "Level Up" book. And while "Level Up" claims to be 5e-compatible, and consequently so too should be "Paranormal Power", I find myself very hesitant to cross the streams. And where books like the "Dungeon Delver's Guide" include conversion notes for vanilla 5e, this book does not.

That's a very small quibble, but it does affect my recommendation somewhat. Which is as follows: if you like psionics and you're running "Level Up", I highly recommend this book. If you like psionics and you're running 5e, I'd consider it only if you're happy with blending material from LU into your games - this probably isn't the first book with which to do that. And, of course, if you don't like psionics then skip this one - there's nothing for you here.

And having said all that, I will be looking out for the author's name (Rachel Williamson) on future products, either under her own imprint or for other publishers, because this is a solid product that suggests other good things may be yet to come.

The Restart

After a fairly long hiatus for Christmas (and other things), the campaign resumed yesterday. It's fair to say that the first session did not go entirely to plan - there was a little investigation, and then the party was engaged in a combat in which they found themselves badly overmatched, followed by a retreat and another fight where the party was... less overmatched, but with the problem that three members of the party were surprised (and then there was a flurry of terrible dice rolls).

The upshot is that by rights the session should have been a TPK. And, in all honesty, that may have been for the best. But since I'm not quite ready to walk away yet, we contrived a way out for the party, and we'll see if we can pick up the pieces.

One of the problems, the lesser of the two, I think, is that the two encounters were deliberately right at the top end of what the party 'should' be able to handle. That probably wants adjusted down, slightly, for the future.

Another problem is party composition - I wrote the adventure assuming a standard mix of characters, but we've actually ended up with two barbarians, a monk, and a druid - three strikers and a controller. That lack of a dedicated healer and anyone to soak up damage makes this interesting.

But even that would be fine if the party were able to bring their damage-dealing characters to bear, and to focus their fire. But in the case of the first encounter the party was already somewhat split and then some characters hung back, while in the latter case the surprise meant that some characters were disabled even before they were able to act.

So there's certainly some food for thought going forward.

And since I'd prefer not to be entirely negative, I should note that the exploration part of the session did go pretty well, revealing some of the background of the underlying adventure and teasing threats to come.

Tome of Beasts III Lairs

As part of the Kickstarter for "Tome of Beasts", I signed up for the PDF of the accompanying Lairs book - a collection of short adventures showcasing monsters from the book. There are Lairs books for both "Tome of Beasts" and "Tome of Beasts II", and indeed for the "Creature Codex", but I haven't looked at any of these books previously.

The adventures themselves range from levels 1 to 12. They're all short, intended for a session or two of play, with a 5-room dungeon (or a little more) at the centre of each. Each features a small handful of monsters from "Tome of Beasts III", with some also drawing monsters from the SRD (or Monster Manual).

As might be expected, the adventures are something of a mixed bag. They're all functional, if rather basic, adventures. None of them are terrible, none of them are really spectacular, though some few do seem rather dull. That said, if needing a quick adventure at short notice, or if particularly looking for something to use monsters from ToB3, these are decent.

Ultimately, though, this book hasn't inspired me to go looking for the other Lairs books, and I'm not particularly inclined to recommend this book. Certainly, it's a companion volume for ToB3, so this is one to avoid if you don't have that book. If you do have that book, this one is worthwhile if you're looking for a set of short adventures (which, to be fair, is a useful thing to have - provided you don't already have a ready supply of such things). And, of course, if you are offered a good package deal then this may well be worth looking at.

So that's a somewhat ambivalent review for that one. Make of it what you will.

(Note, though, that "Tome of Beasts III" itself is something I regard much more highly - whether you go for this one as well or not.)

Tome of Beasts III

Seven years ago, in my review of "Tome of Beasts", I said I probably wasn't interested in any more generic monster books. I then repeated this four years ago in my review of "Creature Codex", and then again in my review of "Tome of Beasts II".

And here we are. In my defense, this time Kobold Press have declared that this is the final volume in their ToB 'trilogy'. We'll see. Perhaps also of note, I picked this one up from their Kickstarter, and only in PDF - I find I'm very much moving away from physical RPG books now.

There's actually very little to say about this book - it's a 400ish page book, in glorious full colour, containing a lovely assortment of new monsters. If you enjoyed previous volumes in the series, you'll probably enjoy this; if you didn't, you almost certainly won't; and if you haven't checked out those volumes you should get them first. This book doesn't require the earlier volumes, but as they publish the monsters have become increasingly niche in nature, so the earlier volumes are probably more useful.

If making recommendations for 'monster' books for 5e, my order of recommendation is as follows: "Monster Manual", "Tome of Beasts", "Monster Manual Expanded", "Creature Codex", "Monster Manual Expanded II", "Tome of Beasts II", "Monster Manual Expanded III", "Tome of Beasts III", "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes", "Volo's Guide to Monsters", and finally "5th Edition Foes". Indeed, at this point I would stop well before the end of that list - I don't regret any of the purchases, but I just don't need all these monsters.

(Note that "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" and "Volo's Guide to Monsters" have now been replaced with "Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse". Based on what I've heard, I would certainly recommend the combined volume over the two separate ones, and it would probably appear a good bit higher on the list. However, as I don't own that book, I cannot make a solid recommendation.)

My recommendation here is necessarily conditional. If you're looking for even more monsters, this book is an excellent buy. If you're looking for specific WotC-owned monsters, then of course this won't do the job for you. Likewise, if you're looking for monsters that will appear in WotC products, or on the DM's Guild, this book isn't going to help. And if you're looking for anything other than monsters, this isn't the book for you. It does one thing, but does that one thing extremely well.

And that's that.

I'm pretty sure I'm now done with buying books for D&D 5e (even if the OGL thing does get reversed, with the new version coming next year, it doesn't make sense to buy much), I'm even more sure I don't need more monsters, and Kobold Press claim they're finished. But maybe I'll be reviewing "Creature Codex II" in a couple of years...

D&D Starter Set: Dragons of Stormwreck Isle

Having been hugely impressed with both the previous Starter Set and the Essentials Kit, I was very interested to see what was in WotC's new Starter Set, "Dragons of Stormwreck Isle". I therefore picked it up for Christmas, and have just finished working through it.

This set is a box the same size as both the previous sets, priced at $19.99 - the same as the previous Starter Set, though due to a VAT increase (thanks Rishi!) and a weak pound (thanks Kwasi!), it was slightly more expensive. On the other hand, eight years of inflation means that the original set 'should' be about $25.

For your money you get a set of dice, two booklets, five pregenerated characters, and a flyer adertising... something. Oh, and a cardboard insert designed to make the box look fuller than it actually is.

The dice are just dice. As with the previous Starter Set you get a set of 6 dice (no "d10 percentile"), and they're all the same colour. That's a little disappointing on both counts, but understandable. Besides, I have dice.

The five pregen characters are likewise fine. They're just example characters: a Fighter, a Paladin, a Rogue, a Cleric, and a Wizard. One nice touch is that here, unlike in the previous set, where a character has an explorer's kit, or similar, this has been itemised into specific items right on the character sheet - no need to check the rulebook. On the flip side, the characters have 'lost' the various traits (Ideal, Bond, Flaw), and are therefore much 'thinner' in role-playing terms than previously.

(Perhaps also of note, a lot of the artwork in this set uses the characters from the old D&D cartoon, and those names are used in the various examples in the book. That's an interesting touch, though I'm not sure why they went for a nostalgia play for a cartoon that aired 37 years ago. Plus, the pregens aren't all human, so that doesn't fit, and they've had to invent a new character, Nico, to be the cleric.)

The flyer is fine - it points to arious other products, including some "how to play" videos. That's probably a set up from the equivalent in the old set, though not really worth paying anything for.

The cardboard insert is, obviously, truly awesome and worth the price of admission alone. (Actually, there is one small possible value - if you remove it, that creates a bit of space in which you could fit your own notes or other materials. Again, not worth paying for, but not quite the embarrasment I previously thought.)

The first of the booklets is a 32-page rulebooks. This is essentially the same material as the previous Starter Set, providing a quick synopsis of the rules of the game as they relate to the adventure included. In particular, note that this does not include character creation rules.

It should be noted that while this book has the same page count as the equivalent in the previous set, the font is a good bit larger and there is more whitespace. There is therefore less material here - fewer spells, slightly less equipment, and the omission of the rules for Inspiration (hence the lack of Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws).

And thus far, there is absolutely nothing here to recommend this set - the flyer is advertising and the cardboard insert is of no values; the characters can be freely downloaded from Wizards' website, and the Basic Rules (and, even better, the Essentials Kit rulebook) are likewise freely available. The dice have some value, but better dice can be had easily enough.

As with the previous Starter Set, this one can only be recommended for the adventure, "Dragons of Stormwreck Isle" - the second, 48-page, booklet in the set.

And it's okay but, sadly, no more than that.

The booklet starts with an ultra-quick overview of the rules the DM needs for running the adventure. It then has a four-part adventure, a little section on what to do next, and then appendices detailing the magic items and monsters used in the adventure. There's basically nothing here about DMing in the wider sense - the book gives you what you need to run this adventure, and nothing more. Which is fair enough. Wizards were up-front about this being their strategy, it's the same as the previous Starter Set, and so not really a criticism.

Unfortunately, what is due to criticism is the nature of the adventure itself. "Lost Mine of Phandelver" actually had a very clever structure - a small dungeon to start, constraining the action tightly to be easy to run; then the starter town with various plots in there; then a wider sandbox area with several mini-quests; and then a final larger dungeon for the DM to really stretch their wings.

"Dragons of Stormwreck Isle" jumps straight to the starter location, with the DM being presented with a dozen characters to try to bring to life. And while there are things for the characters to do, there isn't the same constraint which means there also isn't the same clear objective.

Parts two and three then provide two mini-quests, much like those in part three of LMoP, except that these have to be pitched at parties who could be either 1st or 2nd level. Each is pretty much a 5-room dungeon (or slightly more... but not much). That's okay, but provides very limited scope for branches, loops, or other clever dungeon design. They're absolutely fine, but they're very basic.

And then part four gives a showdown with the mini-boss of the adventure. Again, this is little more than a 5-room dungeon with a couple of interesting features. And, again, it's fine but no more than that.

One other thing that is definitely worth noting is that while DoSI is designed for characters of levels 1-3 compared with LMoP's 1-5, and although the book is nominally three-quarters of the length, at 48 versus 64 pages, levels 1 and 2 in 5e are very much "training wheels" and so very short indeed. And because of the bigger font size and the increased whitespace, this book is actually a lot smaller than LMoP - I estimate it at little more than half the length.

The upshot of that is that, like the previous Starter Set, you should buy this set if and only if you plan to run this adventure. But where LMoP was very much worth the price of entry (indeed, it may be the single best adventure WotC have produced for any version of the game, ever), DoSI is no better than okay.

Looking at the comparison with previous sets, I would recommend the previous Starter Set over this one without hesitation - LMoP blows DoSI out of the water, and everything else is a wash. I'd probably also recommend the Essentials Kit over this one - in every regard than the adventure the EK is the better, and the adventure in DoSI is only marginally better than DoIP. And where LMoP dovetails really nicely with the adventure DoIP, the same is not true of DoSI, which happens in a fairly separate reason.

All in all, this set is something of a disappointment.

Victory!

Last night Wizards of the Coast backed down on their attempt to de-authorize the OGL 1.0a. They even placed the 5.1 SRD under a Creative Commons license (which is... interesting...). In short, we won!

It's fair to say that this is an unexpected development. It's also fair to say that it is a very welcome one.

Victory!

Two Addenda to "Spell Components and Item Crafting"

Two small things I should have mentioned in my previous post, except that I didn't think of them until later:

Spellbooks and Unique Spells: In addition to providing a source of Lore, some captured spellbooks may also contain the details of variant ("Level Up") or unique spells (which, in D&D, I would consider to be any spell not in the PHB). These spells may be learned the same as any other, using Lore, but should probably either be more powerful than other spells of their level (as befits their unique status) or have a slightly lower Lore cost.

That said, to ease book-keeping I'd argue that the option to buy them should be exercised at the next available opportunity or be lost.

Identifying Magic Items: Identifying a magic item becomes an exercise in expending Lore while examining the item. This returns some utility to the identify spell, in that casting this spell allows identification without Lore. Additionally, taking the item to a sage allows them to expend Lore on the character's behalf.

Spell Components and Item Crafting

I've put together a bunch of my thoughts on spell components and magic item crafting (and, actually, Wizards learning spells too). Here's what I've come up with:

Spell Components

• Expensive material components are removed from all spells. In theory, the spells should be rebalanced for their omission, but since spell balance is a joke, there's no point.
• Every spell has V, S, and M components. The material component can be anything thematically appropriate, either to the spell or to the caster. Casters are encouraged, but not required, to provide some description of how they cast their spells, just as martial characters are encouraged, but not required, to provide some description of their attacks.
• A character with a spell focus can omit any one of the three components. Most casters therefore cast spells with a flourish of their wand and a magic word.
• A character can use an action to pre-cast a spell, and thus omit any one of the three components. The pre-casting only lasts until the end of their next turn, and then fades without effect. This can be combined with the use of a focus to require only one component.
• A character can omit all three components by casting the spell with a slot one level higher. Doing so gives no additional effect (so is seldom worthwhile).
• There are four types of Power Components: Lore, Special Materials, Reagents, and Residuum. A character may choose to expend a quantity of Power Components (any type) when casting a spell. Doing so causes the spell to be treated as though cast with a slot one level higher than is actually used, to a maximum of the highest slot the character can cast normally. (So a 7th level caster could boost a fireball but not an ice storm.) The Power Component boost is always added last, and the quantity of components expended is the level of the final spell slot squared.

Lore, Special Materials, Reagents, Residuum

• Lore is an accumulation of mystic secrets. It can take the form of written lore, secret knowledge, or even just captured memories.
• Special Materials are things like meteorite iron, orichalcum, powdered unicorn horn, sacred artifacts, and similar - anything of mystic significance that is reasonably durable.
• Reagents are similar, but typically organic in nature. They are also prone to decay - reagents must be used during the adventure in which they are recovered, or by the end of the downtime period immediately thereafter, or they are lost.
• Residuum is raw, unprocessed magic.

Power Components cannot be bought. In general they can be accumulated as treasure. Additionally, when Wizards gain levels they gain enough Lore to learn two spells of the highest level they can cast. Artificers gain the same number of Power Components; these can be in any form the character prefers.

Crafting Magic Items

To craft a magic item, a character must meet three prerequisites:

1. They must be of the stated character level or above. (Class doesn't matter.)
2. They must purchase materials for crafting equal to a quarter of the base price of the item.
3. They must provide the required Power Components needed to construct the item (which will vary from item to item - scrolls require Lore, potions require Reagents, and almost everything else requires some combination).

That done, the character can spend a downtime period crafting the desired item.

Magic items can also be broken down into Power Components - doing so recovers half the components used in the construction of the item (with each component rounded down). The gold expended is lost.

Buying and Selling Magic Items

In any given settlement, one or more magic items can be found for sale - the specific items should be rolled if characters go looking. Items can be purchased at their modified base price. Magic items can be sold at their modified sale price.

A character can also commission an item construction (for instance, if they don't meet the level requirement). Doing so requires them to supply the Power Components. At the end of the next downtime period, they can then purchase the item at the base price (unmodified).

Learning Spells

A Wizard can no longer learn spells from captured spellbooks or scrolls. These items now provide a source of Lore that can be used for any applicable purpose.

Wizards instead learn spells by expending Lore. Learning a spell requires an expenditure of Lore depending on the level of the spell. At the end of the next period of downtime, the Wizard adds the spell to his spellbook.

OGL: Fallout

I'm currently running what is likely to be my final D&D campaign. That doesn't really have anything to do with the OGL - my group has fallen to the minimum size I'm happy with and is likely to lose another player before too long, our efforts to recruit anyone new have failed, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to try to put together a new 'home' group. Plus, I've been increasingly disenchanted with gaming for the past few years, so this looks like a good stepping off point.

But the reality is that if the OGL does get launched in the leaked form (which remains a big 'if', for now) then that 'probably' becomes a 'definitely'. If WotC take this action then I certainly won't be buying any of their new products, I won't be playing their game (any edition - as any engagement with D&D in any form helps them as a "lifestyle brand"), and I won't comment further on D&D in anything other than a disparaging manner.

I may continue gaming in some capacity, but it won't be D&D. And I'll obnoxiously correct anyone who does refer to "Level Up" or "Pathfinder" or whatever as "D&D".

Finally, while I would otherwise have been interested to see their new movie, and while the just-announced D&D tv show might have been the thing to finally tempt me to Paramount+, these will now serve as active disincentives to do so.

I'm really hoping they'll change their approach on this. But it is a weak and fading hope.

The End of the OGL?

Twenty-odd years ago Wizards of the Coast introduced the Open Game License (OGL) - a permanent, unalterable license to allow companies to produce third-party books compatible with the then-current 3e ruleset. Since then, there has been an explosion of materials using that license, including entirely separate games, and including Pathfinder.

(I should note at this point that the OGL was never intended to give rise to a significant competitor to D&D, but this was foreseen as a possibility. The then-management were relaxed about it, because in order for it to happen Wizards would have to make a complete mess of an edition change... which they then did.)

One of the clauses of the OGL states that Wizards have the right to issue new versions of the license, but that material could be published under any authorized version. This had the effect of preventing them from ever issuing a new version, as any changes they made would just be ignored.

Until now.

It seems that Wizards have decided to kill the OGL, and they've hit on a wheeze to do it - they're introducing a new version of the OGL (that is essentially unusable), and at the same time seem intent on declaring the older versions to be de-authorized.

I've seen a bunch of opinions on whether this actually holds any water or not - some lawyers have weighed in to say it works, others to say that it does not. There are, annoyingly, precedents both ways, though the closest seems to go against them. And Ryan Dancey, the originator of the OGL back in the day, doesn't think it can be done.

That said, I'm not sure the legal position matters.

The dominant source of funding for RPG products is now Kickstarter, and the dominant marketplace is One Book Shelf. WotC have strong, and very beneficial, agreements with both of these sites. So if WotC declare the license de-authorized, and if they can get KS and OBS to play along, that would effectively end a vast swathe of projects - sure, you can still publish, but good luck getting funding without KS, and good luck selling without your marketplace.

The other major effect of this is that a lot of the mid-sized companies are now looking at the OGL as no longer being the safe harbour it was always assumed to be. Many of them are now moving away from it, either entirely or at least for new products.

The upshot is that the OGL may well be effectively dead. 2023 has not started well for gaming.