The Cult of Paizo

On Saturday, the most recent Pathfinder book was pushed through my door. Unfortunately, the package had obviously gotten caught in the rains of last week, as it was wrapped in a plastic coating bearing apologies from Royal Mail. (This actually was a case of Not Good Enough, but that's another rant.)

Anyway, it was rather fortunate that this befell my Pathfinder book, for two reasons.

The first of these is that, quite frankly, the Pathfinder book is really not that important. Had the damage occurred to my tax disc (which I've just renewed), that would have been a disaster, as the existing disc would have expired this weekend. Alternately, that Star Wars book I read last month was both expensive, rare, and out-of-print; had that been destroyed it wouldn't have been easy to replace.

The other reason is that Paizo have, quite simply, the best customer service I have ever dealt with - a quick message on their boards and an email later and I'm getting a new copy. I even get to keep the existing copy, although quite what use I would make of it is questionable. I guess I could cut it up for props or something.

And that ties in with something I've mused on before. On occasion, over on ENWorld or similar, I've noted the existence of what I call "The Cult of Paizo" - they seem to have a lot of fans, and a disproportionate number of those fans are almost absurdly dedicated - they buy every product, they greet every announcement as if it's the best thing ever, and they can be really quite obnoxious.

The thing is, though, that Paizo deserve that loyalty from their fans. They produce universally high-quality product (even if Pathfinder is not to your taste, as it is not to mine, the physical quality is still outstanding). They produce a wide range of such products. They are on the forefront of digital distribution, what with offering almost everything in PDF, and providing tablet-optimised versions too. Sure, they don't have anything like the DDI, but then nobdy except WotC do, and it appears that DDI was a failed gamble by WotC. They are one of the very few companies to actively seek to expand the hobby, what with their Beginner Box, and their Organised Play structures. And they also actively seek out and promote new design talent for the industry. Plus, as I said, they have excellent customer service.

Put simply: Paizo are a class act all around, and are probably the best example of an RPG company "doing it right" that's out there - unless of course you have the resources of a Hasbro to back you up.

At this point, Paizo would be insane to drop Pathfinder in favour of 5e. And their fanbase aren't going to desert them, of that I am certain. For WotC, that is a bad thing. For the rest of us... competition is a very good thing, and this is the first time D&D has had serious competition since the dark days of TSR. So, yeah, long may it continue.

Wow, Coins are Heavy!

Apparently, there has recently been a discovery made of a treasure trove of silver coins in a field in Jersey. There's a somewhat-awesome legal argument going on about the ownership of the hoard, but that's not hugely relevant here.

What is relevant to gaming is that the estimated contents of the trove is about 50,000 silver coins (dating from the Iron Age), and the estimated weight is three-quarters of a ton.

Now, naturally, the source article from which I got all this just had to go and use a measure of weight that doesn't have a single universal definition. (Ironically, Imperial measures are extremely useful for fantasy gaming, in a way that Metric just isn't - and the more those measures drop out of common use, the more useful they become in context.) However, if we accept that the US definition that a ton is 2,000 pounds as being "close enough", we can do some calculations.

The bottom line is that there are appoximately 33.333 silver coins to the pound. Further, if we assume that coins of different metals are of approximately the same purity (and so can scale by the atomic weight of the dominant metal), we get some interesting numbers:

• Platinum (atomic weight 195): Approx 18.4 coins per pound
• Gold (atomic weight 197): Approx 18.2 coins per pound
• Silver (atomic weight 108): Approx 33.3 coins per pound
• Electrum (assume a 50/50 gold/silver split, so "atomic weight" 153): Approx 23.6 coins per pound
• Copper (atomic weight 64): Approx 56.2 coins per pound

The average, then, across the standard "D&D coins" would be about 29.98 coins per pound.

(Just out of interest, I looked at some other common metals. It looks like brass would be 63 coins per pound, tin would be 69, and nickel would be 57. I also think it might be interesting to weigh our modern currency - though purely for interest, as our modern coinage has essentially no inherent value.)

D&D uses an approximation of 50 coins to the pound, which is not unreasonable for copper coins, but probably pushing it for gold or platinum. Still, it makes the maths that much simpler, so maybe it's worth sticking with...

But amongst the consequences of this is that I really do need to rethink some of my abstracted "treasure items", especially as it relates to coinage - I had suggested "a pile of X coins" (where X is one of 'poor', 'average', 'good', etc). My thinking was that a pile of coins would be about 3,000 coins, and would be a single Major item. Which sounded pretty good.

3,000 coins would weight about 100 pounds (or 60 pounds using the D&D approximation). That is, a single such pile would be the entirety of what an average-strength character could carry. Oops.

Fortunately, there's a nice, easy fix: simply divide the pile of coins by 10. And so, a Pile of Poor Coins is a pile of about 300 coins, mostly copper but also some silver, it is a Major item, and it has a value of 3gp.

This also allows me to lock down the 'containers' part of Nutshell Fantasy (and material I will also conveniently nick for any future 3.5e games...):

Cost: The cost of the item in gold pieces. If no cost is given, the item is effectively free. A masterwork equivalent costs 10 times as much, or a minimum of 1 gold piece.

Access: The type of action required to access an item stored in this container, or to place an item within the container. An entry of "Short Rest" means that the contents can be accessed only during a short rest, and not during combat. The Quick Draw talent improves the access time by one step, to a minimum of a free action, while a concealed item always takes a standard action to access.

Worn: The approximate location where the item is worn. Typically, characters cannot wear more than a single belt, bandoleer, or similar. Characters have four 'slots' for weapons unless they wear a weapons harness.

Encumbrance: The encumbrance of the item. Conditional items count as Minor items when worn. An entry of "2 people" means that the item is simply too large for a single person to carry it, regardless of strength. Such an item counts as a Major item for each of the 2 people. (Note also that this is the encumbrance of the item itself; any contents must be counted separately.)

Contents: The number and type of items that can be stored in the item.

Container Cost Access Worn Encumbrance Contents
Backpack, medium 2 gp Short Rest Back Conditional 5 Major, 5 Minor
Backpack, small 2 gp Short Rest Back Conditional 3 Major, 3 Minor
Bandoleer - Free Action Torso Conditional 1 bunch throwing knives
Bandoleer, wand - Minor Action Torso Conditional 6 wands
Basket, large - Short Rest Held Major 2 Major
Basket, medium - Short Rest Held Major 1 Major
Belt, simple - N/A Waist Minor 2 belt pouches
Belt pouch - Minor Action Belt Minor 1 item (Major or Minor)
Bracers, knife - Free Action Wrists Major 1 bunch throwing knives
Bracers, wand - Minor Action Wrists Major 4 wands
Chest, large 4 gp Short Rest Held 2 people 10 Major
Chest, Medium 2 gp Short Rest Held Major 4 Major
Chest, Small 2 gp Short Rest Held Major 2 Major
Potion Belt - Minor Action Waist Major 6 potions
Quiver/Bolt Case - Free Action Weapon Major 6 bunches of arrows/bolts
Sack, Medium - Short Rest Held Minor 3 Major
Sack, Small - Short Rest Held Minor 1 Major
Saddlebags, Large 4 gp Short Rest Mount Major 3 Major
Saddlebags, Medium 4 gp Short Rest Mount Major 2 Major
Saddlebags, Small 4 gp Short Rest Mount Major 1 Major
Scabbard - Minor Action Weapon Minor 1 weapon
Spell Component Pouch 5 gp Free Action Belt Minor Spell components
Weapon Harness 10 gp Minor Action Back Conditional 6 weapons

Item Descriptions

Backpack: A well-made pack suitable for carrying many items. This is lined, padded, and waterproofed, protecting the contents against many dangers. The pack also has numerous pockets, straps and attachments, allowing items to be fastened to the outside of the pack where appropriate. However, in order to maximise usage, items must be carefully packed and properly strapped down, and so cannot be accessed quickly. A masterwork backpack (any size) can carry 2 additional Major and 2 additional Minor items.

Bandoleer: A sash or similar item designed to hold throwing knives (or shuriken) or wands for easy access. A masterwork item can hold either a second bunch of knives or 4 additional wands; a masterwork item also allows for the throwing knives (only) to be concealed and yet remain accessible as a free action. Finally, a masterwork bandoleer can be constructed to hold a combination of one bunch of throwing knives and 4 wands, if desired; this must be determined when the item is constructed and cannot be changed thereafter.

Basket: A large and study basket, this requires both hands to carry effectively. Masterwork baskets are extremely rare, but can carry double the listed amounts.

Belt, simple: A simple leather belt. The wearer can attach up to two pouches to this belt. Note that magical belts generally take the same form. A masterwork belt can hold a third pouch.

Belt Pouch: A large pouch, this can contain a single item, either Major or Minor. Masterwork pouches can contain both 1 Major and 1 Minor item; such a pouch contains a separator, allowing both to be accessed easily. A belt pouch used to store sling stones or bullets can be accessed as a free action.

Bracers: A pair of bracers designed to hold throwing knives (or shuriken) or wands for easy access. A masterwork item allows for the throwing knives (only) to be concealed and yet remain accessible as a free action.

Chest: A large, sturdy chest, lock sold separately. Masterwork chests can contain 50% more than the listed amounts. Additionally, a masterwork chest can feature a false bottom or other hidden compartment, concealing the extra items.

Potion Belt: A study belt containing separated spaces for up to 6 potions, allowing the correct potion to be accessed easily. Note that a potion belt does not allow for the attachment of any further pouches, and is worn in place of a simple or magical belt. A masterwork potion belt can hold up to 10 potions.

Quiver/Bolt case: A case designed to hold ammunition, this contains several separated sections, allowing the wearer to correctly draw the right item as part of his attack action. A masterwork quiver or bolt case can hold up to 8 bunches of ammunition.

Sack: A large, sturdy, and flexible sack. Items can be placed within the sack as a free action, but can only be removed during a short rest. Masterwork sacks can contain 1 additional Major and 1 additional Minor item.

Saddlebags: Designed to fit under a saddle of the appropriate sort, these allow a mount to carry items as well as a rider. Masterwork saddlebags can contain 1 additional Major and 1 additional Minor item.

Scabbard: A holder for an appropriate weapon. In general, you are not expected to keep track of mundane scabbards; they are listed simply for completeness. However, the possibility of a magical scabbard does exist. A masterwork scabbard can hold a second weapon, and may even allow that second weapon to be concealed.

Spell Component Pouch: A pouch containing all the standard spell components, this is cunningly constructed to allow the caster to quickly and easily access the items required for his spells. Note that the purchase price of a spell component pouch does not include any material components or focuses with a purchase price of 1gp or more.

Weapon Harness: A harness designed to hold several weapons, distributing the weight and making them available for easy access. This cannot be worn in addition to a backpack, and so it of limited utility to most adventurers. A masterwork weapon harness can hold up to 10 weapons.

Secrets

When creating characters for one-shots, I like to give them some sort of personality and background. At the same time, I don't want to lock the players down too tightly into a specific role, nor do I want to spend ages writing a background that nobody will ever use. And so, I have come to write backgrounds out of four distinct elements:

• The anecdote is some short fact about the character's past. This could be more or less anything, but it does need to be something at least somewhat significant. For example, "I used to be a Jedi Knight, the same as your father."
• The quirk is something about the character's present, something that says something about who he is. "He's a card player, a gambler, a scoundrel. You'd like him."
• The goal, obviously enough, says something about the character's future, at least as he wants to see it. "I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father."
• Finally, the secret is either some fact that the character wants to keep hidden from others, or it's something that he wants to find out. "How did my father die?"

I've found that adopting this model allows me to very quickly write up nice, iconic characters with a bit of flavour to them. It all works surprisingly well.

(At one point, I tried to have players provide backgrounds of this form for their characters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this proceeded to be ignored - as far as I know, they didn't even read the section of the document where I asked for them. I've since dropped any 'requirement' for a background; instead, players can provide as much or as little as they want.)

Now, in the first version of this scheme, the 'secret' entry was omitted. Basically, I hadn't thought of it at that time. However, I've found that adding this element makes for somewhat stronger characters, and somewhat stronger games. It's particularly fun when the pre-gen characters have competing secrets - one of them knows something that the other wants to know, but he's not for telling...

However, this also ties into something I read a long time ago about world (or adventure/campaign/whatever) building: Every time you create a significant game element, you should aim to create at least one secret associated with that element. And so, the Council of Ur have become corrupted and are now undead. The local lord has fallen under the sway of the priests of Morr because he's fated to die soon. There's a secret tunnel over the mountains at Minas Morgul. And so forth.

The idea there is that the PCs can just play the game as a series of quests, with their missions being the only thing they care about... or they can spend time digging around in the world that the GM has created, and find that under the surface there actually is more going on than meets the eye.

Of course, not all secrets will be discovered, but that's fine. The key here is to maintain good recycling facilities - any time a good character lies unused, or a secret goes undiscovered, or whatever, you just dust it off and reuse it at some later time. My mysterious crime boss, The Velvet Glove, has actually appeared in three different campaigns now, set in three different settings (FR, a homebrew, and now Eberron), with three different groups.

(Of course, it's entirely likely that nothing in this post surprises anyone. I may well be the last to come to these 'extraordinary' revelations!)

All the Elements of a Great Campaign

My current favourite author is Bernard Cornwell, and in particular I'm enjoying his Saxon Stories, which chart the genesis of England as a country. It's fascinating stuff, and six books in the series shows little sign of slowing down; indeed "Death of Kings" was probably the best volume to date.

But the reason I'm posting here is that I'm inclined to think that these novels, in particular, would make for the basis of a great campaign. And, indeed, once I've filed off the serial numbers and applied a coat of fantasy paint, that's basically what I intend to do.

As I see it, the key features of the setting that make it so suitable for campaign use are as follows:

Politics and War

We generally think of England as being a single kingdom, but that's basically the end-point of this series. Instead, the land that will one day become England is made up of five (I think) distinct kingdoms. The strongest is Wessex, ruled by Alfred the Great, an extremely capable ruler, but also one who is extremely sickly (he's described as having been dying since he was born). Allied to Wessex is Cent (Kent), although it is somewhat resentful that Wessex tends to neglect the protection of its borders. Alfred also rules Cent, but there's no guarantee that that will remain true.

Wessex's other neighbour is Mercia, which has no king. Instead, various nobles covet the throne, but they dare not take it out of fear of Alfred - Mercia relies on Wessex for protection from the Danes, and that protection may be revoked if any of them take the throne.

Indeed, parts of Mercia are already in the hands of the Danish invaders, as are the remaining two kingdoms, East Anglia and Northumbria.

(The books also occasionally mention the Irish, Scots, and Welsh. In all cases, these are largely isolationist peoples who are hostile to both the English and the Danish.)

Of course, within each kingdom there are many estates, and thus many nobles, who wield power to greater or lesser degrees. And with the Danes constantly attacking and being driven back, there are always opportunities for ambitious men to establish their own holdings.

And then there's the church...

Religion and Mysticism

The books contain hints of at least three different belief systems.

The main religion practiced in England, and especially in Wessex, is Christianity (although it's not really what we might recognise). And so we have churches, and convents, and priests, and nuns, and all of the associated trappings. Alfred is devoutly Christian, but he also struggles with his moral failings. Meanwhile, the priests run the gamut from devout to corrupt, wise to foolish.

Meanwhile, the Danes have their own religion, of the gods Odin and Thor, or Valhalla and Ragnarok... you know the one. (Perhaps crucially, the main character is a follower of Thor, despite being sworn to the service of Alfred.)

Finally, there are everywhere hints of the "old gods" worshipped in England before the coming of Christianity. To be fair, these tend not to play a big part in the series, but they are present.

And all over there is mysticism. The characters all believe absolutely in the power of ritual, whether it is prayer, ritual sacrifice, fear of the spirits of the dead, angels, wise women, and all the rest of it. The books are never really clear on whether any of it has any real power, which in historical fiction is probably a good thing. To quote Futurama, "if you do it right, nobody will be certain that you've done anything at all." (Of course, in a fantasy version, you'd have Clerics and Druids and Wizards, and they'd all have real power.)

Oaths and Warlords

Uhtred, the main character, is probably the biggest badass in England. Seriously, he's the guy that Alfred turns to whenever there is a need to fight a battle, he's the guy that he turns to whenever war breaks out. And he's also a guy who gets routinely mistreated and marginalised whenever there is not a war to be fought, largely because of his religion.

But if Uhtred is a high-level character in a world of mooks, and he's being routinely mistreated, why does he persist in following Alfred? Why not strike out on his own, and become king himself? Or, failing that, why not at least pursue his own ambition, which is to reclaim his ancestral home from the uncle who usurped it?

The answer is that Uhtred has sworn oaths, first to Alfred, then to his daughter, and then to Alfred's son (and, I would presume, his grandson). And although oaths can be broken, Uhtred won't, because he is massively concerned with reputation, and a man who breaks his oaths will never be trusted by others, will never draw men to his side, and will thus never hold any power.

The Fantasy Version

Running this campaign in modern versions of D&D actually poses some significant problems, because while Uhtred is the biggest badass around, he's still distinctly human, while 3e characters are clearly superhuman by 5th level, and 4e characters start that way. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay might be a better fit, or "Small but Vicious Dog", or even AD&D 2nd Edition. Of course, it also doesn't really help that virtually no modern RPG includes any sort of mass combat rules, which are problematic for a campaign in which the shield wall is so important.

However, leaving that aside for the moment, thing do seem to line up reasonably well:

I'm inclined to think that the best setting for a campaign would be the northernmost 'free' parts of 'Mercia' - those lands that are threatened by, but not currently held by, the enemy. This should allow the PCs the optimum freedom - they can choose to go viking, they can swear oaths to their local lord and help him in his bid to become king, they can try to set themselves up as lords (and then king?), they can work for the unification of the Five Kingdoms...

The campaign probably works best of the invading enemy are orcs* (since that's what D&D expects), but I'd be inclined to go for a more 'civilised' orc than is now the D&D standard - actually, hobgoblins would be a better fit, except that orcs provide easy access to the half-orc PC race. Likewise, the isolationist peoples to the north and west, and over the sea, should probably be recast as (wood) elves and dwarves. Gnomes can be vestiges of the "old peoples", while halflings may well live amongst the human kingdoms almost unnoticed. (And, of course, there's plenty of scope for other PC races being peoples from far-off lands.)

* This is where it is important to do a proper job of filing off the serial numbers. The invaders in the books are Danes, but in the campaign they're being recast as orcs. There's an obvious connection that can be made there, and one with racist implications. Obvious, but wrong - this isn't a copy of 8th century Britain with Scottish dwarves and Welsh elves; it's a custom-built fantasy setting intended to capture the essence of the stories.

The priests of the dominant religion would then just be Clerics (which fits very neatly, because of the origins of the Cleric class), while the followers of the "old gods" would be Druids (again, given the origin of the class, that was rather obvious). The third religion is potentially tricky... but we'll deal with it if and when it becomes an issue. (Actually, there's probably potential to make that a "warrior's cult", with no formal priesthood at all.)

And then your Wizards and Sorcerers are crazy mystics, learning their secret ways in isolation, feared and hated by the mainstream, and so not a big impact on society...

Yep, I think there's scope there for a good, solid campaign. Now, I just need a system in which to run it.

The Definition of Hit Points

Ah, the joys. With 5e in the works, the message boards proceed to go mad with all the old discussions again. With the most recent being "just what are hit points?"

Now, this is a topic where everything turns into a tangled mess, because there is no good definition that actually works in all cases. They're toughness. No, they're luck. No, they're skill. No, they're divine favour. No, they're...

I don't really fancy rehashing the whole debate again. However, I think it's worth noting the definition of hit points that I use, both in my 3.5e campaigns and also in Nutshell Fantasy. Other groups and other GMs will define them differently, and that's fine; this is just what I use.

Hit points are an abstraction of various things: toughness, luck, skill, divine favour, script immunity, and whatever else you want to think of. And not all hit points are created equal: some creatures will have a lot of hit points because they're especially tough, some because they're especially lucky, and so forth.

Whenever a character takes damage, even a single hit point, this means that he has in some way been injured, even if it only amounts to a paper cut. Thus, if a character is hit with a poisoned blade and takes any damage, this allows the poison to enter his system and take effect. (Conversely, if the character's damage reduction negates all the damage, this also negates any special effects tied to the damage - something that saved Avon's life in the last session of the Eberron Code.)

However, an increased amount of damage does not reflect a more serious wound, whether this is in absolute terms (the attack does 25 hit points of damage instead of 1), or relative to the character's total. It's all just nicks, cuts, scrapes...

The exception comes when the PC is dropped below 0 hit points, and especially if he is killed outright. In this case, the wound can be a bit more descriptive - the character can be said to have suffered a potentially-fatal blow (for sub-zero), or to have suffered a particularly spectacular demise (if he's killed outright... but only if he's killed outright!). The key here, though, is to remain somewhat ambiguous - the wound needs to be potentially fatal, but it shouldn't be clearly fatal, in case the character stabilises, receives timely first aid, or otherwise needs to survive without magical assistance.

(With monsters, I tend to play a bit fast-and-loose with this, and may well describe the monster as losing a limb somewhere along the line, or suffering a mighty blow, or whatever. Conveniently, monsters tend to feature in exactly one combat, so it's much less important that they be able to survive afterwards. But with PCs, ambiguity is key.)

Now, the big problem with this model is healing. The healing spells all do fixed healing codes - 1d8+lv for cure light wounds, and so on. Which means that when cast on a low-level character, it actually heals all but the most serious of wounds, while when cast on a high-level character it barely heals a scratch. (Not to mention that most characters don't ever actually take anything more than light wounds - they just take a lot of them!)

If I were inclined to fix this for 3.5e, I believe the key is to drop the "Cleric's level" part of the equation, and instead have CLW heal 1d8 plus the recipient's level plus the recipient's Con modifier. That way, the tougher you are, the more you heal. (The various caps can probably stay in place.)

For Nutshell, I'm looking at a slightly different model. Firstly, I intend to introduce various conditions for wounding: Bloodied, Wounded, Seriously Wounded, Critically Wounded...

When a character takes damage in combat, the player may opt for his character to become Bloodied as a result. This reflects the point at which the character is injured such that his wounds impair him. It imposes a -1 penalty to d20 rolls, but also allows the character to benefit from healing. There will probably need to be a rule that you can't become Bloodied by friendly fire, to prevent abuse.

(The later wound categories impose greater penalties; they are imposed by specific attacks, rather than player choice.)

During the short rest at the end of combat, any Bloodied character may regain some hit points (based on Endurance), and will lose the Bloodied condition. Alternately, any of the healing spells, when cast on a Bloodied character (only) will restore hit points and remove the Bloodied condition. (This means, of course, that a character can only benefit from one healing spell at a time - no more wands of cure light wounds!)

And, naturally, each cure spell will remove the corresponding condition, allowing the character to get back in the fight that much more quickly.

Are They Boxing It?

So, WotC have, or are about to, issue reprints of the 1st Edition core rulebooks (the PHB, DMG and MM). They've just announced that they're also doing reprints of the 3.5e core rulebooks in September. And, of course, 4e is still available. That means that all three of the most popular versions of D&D will shortly be in print.

Meanwhile, they're building a new version of the game with the stated goal of reunifying the editions.

To me, this seems to be a bizarre strategy. In order to reunify the editions, then they need to persuade fans of each edition to change over. That already means that they need a new game that's sufficiently better to compel a switch. But surely that persuasion is not helped if you also provide people with a reminder of what they liked about the old edition?

(Also, they had a slight advantage due to scarcity. Getting hold of the 3.5e PHB had become quite difficult, and so a new group were unlikely to choose it. But if you make those rules easily available again, doesn't that remove one more incentive to convert to the new stuff?)

However...

Looking at the 5e playtest rules, I was quite impressed with how comparitively light they were. It really didn't seem to me that those rules would need huge amounts of support - sure, you could introduce lots of new stuff, but unlike the 4e core rulebooks it really felt that the game didn't need it.

And yet, it's near-certain that 5e will follow the same three-book model for the core rulebooks as 1st and 2nd Ed, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, and even Essentials (despite that I'm convinced it's killing the game). That means it will have nearly 1,000 pages for a set of rules that really don't seem to need it. And that means plenty of options built right in to the core.

And we also know that Hasbro, who own WotC, are only really interested in "big" brands - D&D is apparently about a $20-30M per year business, and Hasbro aren't really interested in anything less than $50M+ businesses. If a brand doesn't make that bar, their tendency is to 'box' their brands - put them into an ultra-low maintenance mode for a number of years until they judge the time is right...

Now, I think it's worth noting that 4e really isn't suitable for going ultra low-maintenance. It's almost dependent on keeping lots of supplements in print, on the DDI, on having minis/tokens and battlemats/tiles available. Basically, unless you want to kill it completely, it needs significant resources to keep going at all.

So suddenly I'm wondering if this isn't the masterplan - do a new edition that doesn't require these things, publish only the three core books, and watching sales. If the edition takes off, they can then increase the support it gets, but if it does no better than 3e or 4e, they can safely box it.

Lamentations of their Players...

Okay, the title is not quite part of a quote from Genghis Khan (maybe) by way of Arnold's Conan (but not REH's Conan). Or something. Yes, I'm being educational today.

Anyway, reading through the 1st Edition DMG last year was an eye-opening experience, in several ways. But one of the more interesting points came in Gygax's advice for running the game, in which he insisted it was not the DM's job to keep track of PC abilities, and so if the player didn't ask to use their powers then he should assume that they don't.

(His example was actually a particularly odd one - he said that Elves shouldn't get their racial ability to spot secret doors just by walking past them unless the player specifically asks. But, how is the player supposed to know to ask for secret doors? Is he supposed to be constantly asking, and thus constantly slowing the game down?)

I'm not really sure I agree with Gygax's thesis on this one. Since the DM is the player's only conduit for information, I'm inclined to think he should err on the side of too much information rather than too little. And so, I don't think DM's should require players to ask if they can make Perception checks. And, indeed, if the PC has some sort of extra senses, especially always-on senses, then the DM should be forthright about what they detect without being asked.

However, I am inclined to think that the DM is not responsible for helping players play the game, especially once those players have been playing for a while. It's not the DM's job to suggest a course of action, or point out useful spells, or anything of the sort.

To that end, partly due to Gygax's quote and partly because everyone in my current game has been playing for at least a year now, I've subtly started reducing the amount of 'help' I give. And so, I no longer advise players if their chosen course of action will lead to an Attack of Opportunity, nor do I remind them of the option to "Cast Defensively" (for example). If they want to do these things, then they get to proceed; if they don't think to say so, then they get the AoO automatically.

Which has the rather nice side effect of speeding the game up.

The other thing that I've been doing increasingly is "taking the gloves off". More and more, the opponents of the PCs won't simply split their attacks up amongst the PCs, concenrating on taking down the tough-as-nails Fighter (well, Artificer) while the Wizard (and Psion) get free range to blast them with spells. Instead, they will be aiming to kill the PCs, as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So, perhaps they will try to draw out the tank and pin him down, so that the rest of their band can go after the casters. Or they'll focus all their attacks on one PC to kill that one, and then move on to the next. Basically, the goal (for the monsters) is the death of the PCs.

The danger of this, of course, is that the game may become far too tough. We'll see how it plays out. Thus far, though, it seems to be working well, and is making for a rather more satisfying campaign.

(And if you're one of my players reading this - consider this your fair warning! :) )

Filling a much-needed space...

The title is actually one of my favourite jokes, because people never seem to spot that it means the opposite of the obvious. But I digress...

Back in early 3e, characters had two actions in their turn: a Standard action and a Move-equivalent action. (In 3.5e, the latter became just a Move action.) You also got a number of Free actions.

However, dotted around the text there were various instances of "a free action, once per turn". For example, using the Quicken Spell metamagic feat turned a spell into a free action, but you could use only one per turn.

With the "Expanded Psionics Handbook", a new action type was added to the game: the Swift action (later renamed the Minor action in 4e - a better name). The Swift action formalised all of these exceptions - now, Quickened spells became Swift actions.

But because Swift actions were added to the game late, and in a supplement, they were rare. And they remained rare for the rest of the edition. And so, they were a useful formalisation of something that already existed in the game, at almost no cost.

With 4e, Minor actions were added to the core rules. And the designers at WotC looked at them, and saw they were good. And they saw that the addition of Minor actions had opened up a whole new "design space", which they promptly set about filling - whole new realms of powers were added, so that every class had powers that used Minor actions, and any well-built character would always have something he could do with his Minor action in the round.

As a consequence of this, the game slowed down significantly. Whereas in 3e Swift actions largely went unused and ignored, unless the player had something specific in mind, in 4e players started to scrabble around for something, anything to do with their Minor action so that it wasn't 'wasted'.

With 5e, WotC have decided to drop Minor actions from the game. Only not, because characters will still be able to do all these same things; they just won't be formalised in the text. And you can bet that that "free action once in a round" language will be coming back, because sooner or later some designer is going to want to do that. (I give it three months after the core is released... assuming the core doesn't include that text.)

Which of course will lead to some bright spark, during the development of 6e (if there is such a thing), coming up with the wonderful innovation - "wouldn't it be good to add a formal Minor action type?"

The lesson from Minor actions is this: they do indeed open up a design space, but it's a much needed space. Minor actions should exist in the game, as a bar to those power-gamers who will talk their DMs into letting them do a hundred 'minor' things in the round, but the uses for those actions should be rare. Such that most of the time they just get handwaved away, and such that players generally don't worry about them unless they have some specific use in mind.

(Or perhaps I'm just annoyed. The "action economy" was one of the things that 4e finally got right. And now 5e seems intent on doing away with it. Sigh.)

Orc and Pie - The Side Isn't Optional

The term "orc and pie" comes from a parody adventure written by Monte Cook, which serves to highlight a particular style of D&D adventure - there's an orc in a room, guarding a pie; the adventure is to kill the orc and take the pie. Basically, it's a shorthand for "kill things and take their stuff", which is itself a shorthand for one particular way to playing D&D.

WotC have stated that they believe the core of D&D gaming is "orc and pie".

The problem with this mode of thinking can be seen quite easily by looking at several of the published modules. First, we can look at the 'classic' "B2: The Keep on the Borderlands" - the most-printed adventure in the history of D&D (mostly because it was included in one of the Basic sets), and the adventure that gave us the "Caves of Chaos" that now appear in the 5e playtest packets.

Now, as written, this adventure is nothing more than a series of interconnected rooms, many of them filled with monsters, and many filled with treasures. The adventure doesn't really provide anything more than that - there's no great quest, no particular motive given for venturing into the caves, no roleplaying notes...

Opinions of this module are very mixed. A lot of people play through it, see it just as a hack-and-slash fest, and hate it. Others argue that it is a great module - it provides scope for the PCs not fighting the monsters and instead sneaking around, or playing politics between the factions, or engaging in proxy wars.

So, we have two modes of play: those who treat it as nothing more than "orc and pie" hate it, while those who use it as "orc and pie {and something else}" consider it a classic. Now, I may be crazy, but that suggests to me that it's that {something else} that's the difference - that the side-dish is really important. It can be many things - storyline support, heavy roleplay, stealth, diplomacy, or whatever - but while there's a choice of sides with the "orc and pie", providing the side isn't really an option.

Now, there's no denying that "orc and pie" is a very popular game style. Pretty much all of us start out that way. But very few of us continue to play in that style for any length of time - we either add {something else}, or we get bored and do something else. (And, as I noted in my previous post, video games do a perfectly good, or even better, job of presenting "orc and pie" play. Indeed, the D&D boardgames also do a really good job in that style... and indeed, 4e is near-perfect for that style (which isn't to say that that's all 4e can do - it's just that it's better at it than any of the other editions, including the 5e playtest).)

To further highlight the danger of WotC's thinking, I'll point to two of their recent published adventures: "Sceptre Tower of Spellgarde" and "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens". In both cases, these adventures present long and detailed adventure locations, complete with interesting battlegrounds and several solid encounters. As examples of "orc and pie" they're first rate.

However, in both cases, the key adventure location consists of a series of rooms, each with (effectively) one entrance and one exit (leading to the next encounter). The monsters are either utterly disinclined to talk, or they're fanatical followers of their leader. In short, there's no side-dish. Both the adventures are soulless railroads, they're both terrible adventures... and I personally credit "Sceptre Tower" with killing what had been until then a particularly enjoyable 4e campaign.

In other words, by focussing on "orc and pie" as the core of the game, they've neglected everything else. (Which I guess ties in to Chris's "On Invisible Gorillas" post...)

Conversely, I'll also point to Paizo's recent adventure paths, which are widely regarded as being excellent. The best of the bunch is "Kingmaker", in which there are plenty of orcs, plenty of pies... but there's also a side game in which the PCs are responsible for building their own kingdom, in as much or as little detail as they wish. In "Jade Regent", the adventure follows the journeys of a caravan across the top of the world. Here, the campaign has a number of recurring NPCs, and a sub-game handling the means by which the PCs interact with these NPCs. And then, when the caravan gets to where it's going, the focus changes to a rebellion against an evil empire, where various PC actions can aid or hinder their efforts, quite aside from what monsters they kill. Finally, in "Skull and Shackles", the PCs are pirates with their own ship, and they must build a reputation, and amass Plunder, and do all manner of other pirate-y things.

Or, in all cases, they could just go all "orc and pie" on the adventure. That works too.

What I'm getting at here is that while D&D must support "orc and pie" play, that just isn't enough. Published adventures need to provide a side-dish as well (or, better still, a choice of sides). The DMG should provide solid advice for the DM on how to present his choice of sides (preferably with full-blown "campaign modules", giving rules subsystems for each). And while the Starter Set should probably stick with the basics of "orc and pie" play, any potential "Expert Set" should provide more - indeed, if they were to include a full-blown adventure in the Starter Set, even that should at least provide a nod to "orc and pie... and something else".

As for "Keep on the Borderlands" - yes, it's true that the {something else} isn't in the text, and isn't even implicit in the text. It's fair to argue that the only reason people have fond memories of that adventure is that good DMs spotted the possibilities and brought them out in play. But then, isn't that an argument for new published adventures making sure the {something else} is present in the text, and is presented front and centre, so that it's not just good DMs who spot it - but that average and mediocre DMs are aware of the possibilities too... and may one day become good DMs?

Multiple Solutions, and a Problem

Here's the adventure scenario: foul gnolls have raided the village and dragged off several young women to be sacrificed to their foul demon-lord. Your task is to get them back.

Now, how do you achieve that?

The obvious answer to this is "go and kill all the gnolls". That done, you can simply collect the prisoners and return home in time for the celebration.

The problem is that if every adventure runs like this, it pretty quickly gets to be a boring game - all your doing is fighting an escalating series of opponents, each carefully calculated to challenge but not overwhelm your PCs.

Ideally, you want the game to offer multiple solutions (and, even better, to do so without assuming any particular solution). And so, the PCs could instead sneak into the gnoll camp, locate the prisoners, and sneak them back out. Or they could go in and negotiate with the gnoll chief. Or they could impersonate the gnoll's foul demon-lord, declare that the prisoners are an unworthy sacrifice, and order they be set free. Or they could assassinate the gnoll shaman. Or they could raise a militia from the surrounding region and lead them to wipe out the gnolls. Or they could flood the caves wherein the neighbouring orc tribe lives, thus causing them to start raiding the gnolls. Or...

The goal here is to turn the game into more than just Fight A - Fight B - Fight C - Fight D - Extended Rest - Fight E - Fight F - Boss Fight - Big Party.

(And the reason that that's important is that computers have been able to offer that experience perfectly well for years. If all I want is "orc and pie", then I can just play "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" on the PS2, and have a perfectly enjoyable time. And I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on books to do so, nor deal with the hassles of trying to coordinate four other people so that they are free to play for 3 hours every other Tuesday. (And, yeah, electronic gaming has a buy-in cost. But how many potential gamers do you know who don't already own at least one console, or at least a PC, to play on? Which means the only cost is the game itself - and in that regard D&D actually loses!)

Now, on the face of it, 3e provides support for many of these things in the skill system. Stealth? Yep - use Hide and Move Silently. Diplomacy? Yep, there's an app for that. Disguise? Yep, same. Assassination? See stealth.

The problem comes when the group actually starts to consider such things. At which point, the Rogue might be all for stealth... but the Fighter has no ranks in the skills, and is wearing heavy armour to boot. Negotiation isn't an option because nobody learned to speak Gnoll, they've all dumped Charisma, and nobody took ranks in Diplomacy. Likewise disguise.

(And things don't get any better if one of these is an option - for stealth to be a real option, the entire party has to be built to make it so... which means that it's going to become the primary means of resolving problems.)

And so it goes. Pretty quickly, a system that has built-in support for multiple solutions to problems actually serves to reduce options, because although each member of the party can help with one of the alternatives, the only solution to which they can all meaningfully contribute is combat. And so, combat it is!

So what does this mean?

Well, for starters I'm starting to think that classes like the Rogue and the Bard are redundant. Rather than having classes designed for stealth or diplomacy, the game should instead make these something all characters can do, at least to an extent - so, if the party decides to sneak into the enemy camp, the Fighter just leaves his plate mail at home and he's good to go.

As a corollory to that, I'm inclined to think that gear should both have a bigger impact on a character's skills, and a lesser impact on their combat ability. In 3e, if the Fighter leaves behind his heavy armour, shield, and weapons, he's leaving behind a huge chunk of his effectiveness - he's going to get mauled if combat breaks out. (And the Fighter is particularly gear-dependent.) However, if being without armour isn't so crippling, and if being without his heavy weapons doesn't reduce his damage from HUGE to tiny, then being without becomes a reasonable choice to make. (And, added bonus, it means that the DM can use things like rust monsters, sundering effects, and the like without being pelted with dice.)

Finally, I'm starting to think that 5e is on the right track in eliminating skills as we know them. Or, rather, that the insertion of skills (starting with non-weapon proficiencies way back when) was a critical mistake in the game. Or at least some of them: I think things like Knowledge skills, 'movement' skills, and perception skills still have a place; it's just the skills that open up new ways to solve the problem that are, ironically, the problem - those alternate solutions should always be open.

Lessons from TV: Languages

D&D handles language in about the worst way possible. Characters either speak a language or they don't, which means that whenever a communication-based challenge comes up it is either trivial or impossible. Either way, it's dull - to the point where everyone who speaks should just speak Common. Seriously.

The way that languages should be handled is shown, again, in "Stargate". This time, it is the movie that is the best example, although the TV series provides some significant advice also.

In Stargate, one of the key PCs is Daniel Jackson, an expert on Egyptology. When the party pass through the gate, they find themselves in an alien world, with few points of reference. And, of course, when they meet the natives, they can't communicate.

Except...

The language that is spoken is derived from the same source as the heiroglyphics, which which Jackson is familiar. And so, right at the outset he is sort-of-but-not-quite able to make out the words. He is thus able to master basic communication from the outset.

However, the key comes later, when Daniel's wife shows him to her people's forbidden writings, which are in essentially the same heiroglyphics. And, working from that, Jackson is able to learn the language, and thus communicate. (Of course, this is unrealistically quick, but otherwise it would be a crap film.)

And I'm pretty sure that that's the way that languages should work - when characters are operating in their 'home' region, they should basically be able to communicate - speaking, reading and writing. (And, in the case of elves, they should just know Elvish, or whatever.)

Occasionally however, whether due to them moving to another land or meeting another people, the party should encounter a group (or writing, whatever) with whom they can't communicate easily. In this case, communication should be done using the Linguistics skill, initially allowing only basic communication.

Finally, once enough time has passed (basically, once the language-based challenge has ceased to be fun), the various characters should just be assumed to have learned enough of each other's languages to communicate reasonably well - and then you stop worrying about it until next time.

(This also allows for ancient languages to be a key factor in the game, where the difficulty of the language sets the DC of the Linguistics check, and the text can then be translated over time. That doesn't work with D&D as-is, since characters can either read the text straight off, or they can't read it at all. And it's a good thing if PCs can sometimes read those ancient scrawlings in the dungeon - it ties nicely into the three-clue rule if the password for the trap is written beside the trap in a foreign language.)

Now, the SG-1 series very rarely brings up the issue of languages, at least in a spoken form. This highlights a very important factor: language challenges should be rare, at least where they concern communicating with NPCs. The reason for this is that it cuts down on options - if the PCs and the orcs have a common language, then they can talk or they can fight. If they don't share a common language, that just makes the fight that much more likely.

So, in short:

• Specific languages should be replaced with a Linguistics skill.
• Unless there is a good reason otherwise, most creatures that speak should speak Common.
• All manner of clues can then be hidden away in foreign languages, allowing for an actual challenge in finding them, rewarding PCs who specialise in languages, without rendering them down to a trivial/impossible dichotomy.

Lessons from TV: Impossible Odds

When running a Star Wars game, it can be very tempting to make the Empire a huge, monolithic power that can just steamroll over the PCs. This is usually a mistake. The end result tends to be that the campaign becomes too grim - the PCs are paralysed by the overwhelming odds, they can never really achieve anything, and so the game crumbles.

A model that is usually (though not always) better can be found in the TV series "Stargate SG-1" (and also "Stargate: Atlantis"), a show that actually contains a lot of good advice for GMs who want to look for it.

Anyway, in SG-1, our heroes are a crack team of soldiers and experts. However, when they go through the gate they're generally travelling into enemy-held territory, facing greater numbers of foes armed with better weapons. And they're constantly coming across alien technologies that, realistically, they should have no chance of understanding, never mind repairing or modifying.

However, what the show does is quite clever. Pretty quickly, it gives the heroes allies in the wider galaxy, allies who are technologically advanced but few in number - they are able to advise, but they can't really step in to save the heroes too often. And they very quickly get an understanding of the alien tech. Finally, the enemy is quickly revealed to be weaker than was initially thought, to be quite fractious, and generally to be vulnerable to carefully aimed attacks.

The net result of this is that as the series progresses, the SG-1 team gradually go from being the underdogs to being one of the major players in the galaxy. They adapt Asgard technology to get their own ships. They adapt the gates to defeat certain threats. Sure, they occasionally suffer setbacks (as allies die out or are defeated, team members are lost, or whatever), and they see the rise of new and more potent threats, but the overall trajectory (after a few scrabbling defeats and hard-won victories) is upwards.

A similar arc can also be seen in the new "Battlestar Galactica" - at the start of the show, the crew are a bunch of has-beens and misfits. However, after just a few episodes they quickly start to pull things together - they get proper deck rotations going, Starback steps up to become a flight instructor and mission planner, and so on.

(However, BSG is a much grimmer show. Here, although they have victories, these tend to be at significant cost. And although they do find breathing space, it's always limited and always ends with a worse situation arising. Here, the trajectory is generally down - both in the crucial population number, but also in terms of their supply situation, morale, and so forth. Essentially, BSG is the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to SG-1's D&D - superficially, they look the same, but one is shiny and happy, while the other leads to despair and madness.)

The Joys of Javascript

Probably the single most useful tool I have for my 3e games, outside of the core rulebooks themselves, is my auto-calculating Character Form. Originally, this came from the Mad Irishman, although I've done a fair amount of work since then updating the sheet (to fix some errors and omissions, to incorporate some of my house rules, and to auto-calculate a few things that hadn't previously been done). It really is lovely.

However, there are a couple of things about the sheet that I don't really like, but don't have the ability to correct. The sheet actually predates the release of the "Expanded Psionics Handbook" but does include psionics. When putting the sheet together, the Mad Irishman made his best guess as to what the rules would look like, and didn't get them quite right. Unfortunately, while I can edit the Javascripts on the form, and so fix some of the calculations, I can't edit the form itself to eliminate the unnecessary elements.

(The Mad Irishman does provide some extremely nice 'fixed' sheets, but these don't exist in form, um, form.)

Where I hit a major snag when developing Nutshell, or even when applying some of the fixes that I think would really help 3e along (such as a reduced skill list) is that this will necessitate the creation of an all-new character sheet, and then a lot of work turning that into an auto-calculating form. Maybe I've become spoiled, but I really don't want to go through that!

(Especially after having just spent several hours this weekend changing the skill calculations from 3e style to Pathfinder style, and so eliminating the 'half rank' fix from the sheet, and adding an auto-calculate of the +3 bonus that Pathfinder gives for having a rank in a class skill. Acrobat makes this a long, slow, tedious process, such that every skill needs done separately, with a new cell inserted, reformated, set to 'hidden', and the calculation script inserted. That last is a copy-and-paste job, so it's quite quick... and prone to errors.)

Still, the upshot is that having done all this work, I now have a much better understanding of Acrobat's version of Javascript... and I also have a much nicer auto-calculating form.

An Amusing Omission

I'm always rather amused by a particular omission in the 3e PHB (both 3.0e and 3.5e).

If you look in the "Equipment" chapter, and at the table giving the "Adventuring Gear" (page 128 in the 3.5e book), you'll find a footnote reading, "These items weight one-quarter this amount when made for small characters. Containers for Small characters also carry one-quarter the normal amount." (The emphasis is mine.)

Now, that's a good and reasonably sensible rule. To be honest, it's probably a bit too much detail to worry about, but it does make at least some sense.

Except... find for me the place where it specifies how much "the normal amount" is. Or, probably better, don't bother - it doesn't exist. WotC went to the trouble of putting in an exception for Small containers, but then forgot to include the regular rule. And then, presumably because they enjoyed it so much the first time, they retained those rules exactly as they are for 3.5e!

Huzzah!

(4e, of course, doesn't have either the footnote or the capacities - it's encumbrance rules are even more absurdly generous than those of 3e, to the point where it's just not worth bothering with even if you're particularly anal about such things.)

Fortunately, the missing table does exist, back in 2nd Edition (which has the table, but not the exception for Small characters!). This gives the capacities for several containers, both in terms of weight and volume allowed. Perhaps notably, it does not give capacities for liquid containers in the table, but since the volume of water is proportional to its weight, and the weights given are for full barrels, waterskins, etc, this should be easy to work out.

Anyway, the capacities are as follows:

• Backpack - 50lbs - 3'x2'x1'
• Basket, large - 20lbs - 2'x2'x2'
• Basket, small - 10lbs - 1'x1'x1'
• Belt Pouch, large - 8lbs (400 coins in 3e/4e/5e) - 6"x8"x2"
• Belt Pouch, small - 5lbs (250 coins in 3e/4e/5e) - 4"x6"x2"
• Chest, large - 100lbs - 3'x2'x2'
• Chest, small - 40lbs - 2'x1'x1'
• Sack, large - 30lbs - 2'x2'x1'
• Sack, small - 15lbs - 1'x1'x8"
• Saddlebags, large (a horse, I guess) - 30lbs - 18" x1'x6"
• Saddlebags, small (pony or riding dog - and should be Medium in 3e-speak) - 20lbs - 1'x1'x6"

Why does this matter?

This all ties in to my pesky obsession with encumbrance, or more specifically with what PCs can carry. If a backpack has an effectively unlimited capacity, then there's no point keeping track - pretty soon the party Fighter will have a massive Strength and can just carry everything they could possibly need. Whereas of course if the backpack can only hold 50lbs, then it doesn't matter that the Fighter has a Strength of 50 - he can still only carry so much.

And, of course, there's the tedious matter of realism. Next time you do your weekly shop, compare how much you can carry if you just use your hands, versus the amount you can carry if you put it into shopping bags first!

Of course, all that said, it's probably not important enough to worry about too much!

Death and Dying

Speaking of house rules, I've made a bit of a mess of applying one for death and dying rules in "The Eberron Code" - roughly half of two different house rules are in place, applied rather intermittently. Still, it seems to work okay. The house rule deals with the subject of death and dying, which is an area in which my thinking has gone back and forward more than a few times.

The truth is, I'm not really a fan of 3e's -10 hit points death threshold. The problems are two-fold:

Firstly, at anything above very low level the buffer is sufficiently small that it doesn't really provide any great protection against death - characters are pretty likely to just blow through it and go from "okay" to "dead outright" in a single blow. Secondly, in cases where the buffer does apply, it tends to provide far too much comfort - if a character is at -6, the Cleric knows that he has three full rounds to get over there to provide healing.

The 4e model is, at least in places, somewhat better. Here, there's a "three strikes and you're out" rule - characters have to make a Death Save every round, and after they've failed three they die. However, character's don't die from damage until a much lower threshold, so they're very unlikely to be killed outright. Actually, this latter is the one thing I don't care for about the 4e model - I think it's an unnecessary complication.

So, the house rules:

Characters at any positive number of hit points operate as they do currently. Characters cannot be reduced to fewer than 0 hit points.

A character reduced to 0 hit points is dead. The character drops prone, and drops anything held in his hands. However, the character is only quite dead - in fact, he may not even be unconscious!

Each round on his turn, a character who is quite dead must make a death save. Roll d20 - on a roll of less than 1 - 9, the character slips into unconsciousness and becomes mostly dead. On a roll of 10 - 19, nothing happens. And on a roll of 20, the character becomes stable, and need make no further saves.

A character who takes further damage while quite dead must make an additional, immediate death save, as above - even if he was previously stabilised.

A character who is quite dead may take free actions normally. Alternately, he can take a single action (standard, move, or swift) on his turn; however, after he has done so he must make an additional, immediate death save - even if he was previously stabilised.

A character who is quite dead can benefit from healing as normal - whether from a spell, magic item, or application of the Heal skill. Such a character starts from 0 hit points, so any amount of healing will return him to a positive value.

A character who is mostly dead is unconscious and may take no actions of any sort. Such a character does not need to make further death saves, but is also beyond immediate help.

If a character who is mostly dead receives powerful healing (that is, any single effect that would normally restore him to 50% of his normal total or more), he is instead restored to 1 hit point. Likewise, the application of the revivification spell can restore the character to 1 hit point. Any lesser magical healing, or an application of the first aid use of the Heal skill, leaves the character stable; thereafter, a full month of long-term care will restore the character to 1 hit point.

If the character is not stabilised within 5 minutes of the end of combat, the character becomes completely dead.

A character who is stable remains at his previous status - whether that is quite dead or mostly dead, but is not at risk of getting worse. Such a character does not need to make death saves each round. However, if a character who is stable suffers damage, or if he takes action then he immediately returns to his previous status.

Most save-or-die effects immediately reduce the character to 0 hit points, and leave them mostly dead. Likewise, a successful coup de grace leaves the victim at 0 hit points and mostly dead. The death knell spell applies to a character who is quite dead or mostly dead, and leaves them completely dead. The disintegrate spell, and any other spell that specifies that it destroys the body, renders a victim completely dead.

Action Points and Advantage

I'm not a fan of Action Points as they appear in 3e-derived versions of the d20 system (whether that's Force Points in Star Wars, or Action Points in d20 Modern, "Unearthed Arcana", or Eberron). There are various reasons for this, but the biggest is the per-level nature of the Action Point pool, which in my games at least has the perverse effect of making the climactic encounter in many adventures near-trivial, as the players realise they're about to level-up and have loads of APs left.

However, I most definitely am a fan of Action Points as they exist in 4e. Here, when you spend an Action Point, you get an extra action. Simple, clean, and fun - I like it. The one change that I would make to 4e Action Points would be to the rate of acquisition - basically, I would give each PC one AP when they roll initiative, but allow them to have no more than one AP at a time. Effectively, then, they become a per-encounter resource.

I'm also a fan of the 5e notion of Advantage (which, due to NDA, I cannot describe here). Critically, if the player makes the roll and then remembers that he has advantage/disadvantage, it's an easy thing to fix - in effect, advantage/disadvantage can be applied even after the success/failure is known. (This last isn't true of 3e Action Points, another weakness of that mechanic.)

The upshot of that is that if I run another 3e campaign, and especially another campaign set in Eberron, I'll be adopting the following house rules:

Action Points

At the start of each encounter, each PC will receive a single Action Point (generally when rolling Initiative). You can use this in one of three ways:

1. You can spend your Action Point immediately to negate surprise for your character.
2. You can spend your Action Point immediately to take-20 on your Initiative roll. You can spend the Action Point in this manner even after rolling initiative.
3. On your turn, you can spend your Action Point to gain one extra action. This can be a standard, move, or swift action, at your discretion.

Action Points that are not spent at the end of the encounter are lost. No character can have more than one Action Point at a time.

(The other uses for Action Points given in the "Eberron Campaign Setting" apply to Advantage Tokens instead. See below...)

Advantage Tokens

At the start of the session, each player will receive one Advantage Token per hour of expected playtime (or fraction thereof). That is, for our standard evening sessions, running from 7:30 to 10:30, each player will receive 3 Advantage Tokens.

You can spend Advantage Tokens in the following ways:

• When making any d20 roll, you may spend an Advantage Token. (Insert the 5e Advantage mechanic here...)
• When suffering from Disadvantage, you may spend an Advantage Token to negate Disadvantage.
• When your character is dying, you may spend an Advantage Token to automatically stabilise.
• (Insert all the other uses of Action Points from the Eberron Campaign Setting book here - that is, speeding infusions, allowing extra uses of per-day powers, etc.)

You may spend no more than a single Advantage Token per round. That is, if you use one to negate Disadvantage, you cannot then spend a second to gain Advantage on the roll.

(Actually, I'm halfway inclined to present all this to the players in my current Eberron Code campaign, and see what they think about adopting it immediately. But I do so hate changing the rules in mid-campaign...)

The Red Box and the Beginner Box

I've been convinced for a fairly long time now that the single most important in-print product for D&D is the Introductory Box. The future of most rules material seems to lie online, either through the DDI or through the use of eBooks or the like - basically, the ability to carry an entire library of materials on a smartphone or similar, coupled with the easy ability to reference such books, would seem to outweigh most other concerns. (Indeed, it gets to the point where DMs should strongly consider disallowing any materials that cannot be easily referenced online.)

However, the game needs new players, and needs them in large numbers. And online materials make for a really poor introduction to the game. Additionally, the core rulebooks of recent versions of the game also make for a very poor introduction - they typically run to 1,000 pages of text (or as near as makes no difference), and although we know there's no need to read all of that before play, a new player does not. Hence the need for a really good Introductory Box.

(Actually, ideally, the core game would be sufficiently simple that the Introductory Box could serve as the Core Rulebook for the game, with all expansions then building from that. Unfortunately, it looks like WotC, not to mention the community itself, are absolutely wedded to the three-book model, despite that it's probably killing the game. But I digress)

A few months ago, I picked up the starter sets for both 4e and Pathfinder: the Red Box and the Beginner Box, respectively. And, until last Friday, they were happily sitting on my shelf, unread. My reading of reviews online had given me a strong impression of both, but I hadn't actually gone through them, so couldn't really speak from a position of knowledge.

That changed on Friday. And so, here are my impressions:

First, let's dispense with the peripheral components, of which there are several.

On opening both boxes, the thing that is immediately noticable is a bag of dice. These were inevitable, and pretty dull. Both sets include a single set of the standard polyhedrals. I was a little surprised to see that the Red Box didn't include a d10 with the 10's marked... until I remembered that 4e doesn't actually use d% anywhere in the rules. Otherwise, there's nothing to separate the two sets. (One criticism I have of both is that the dice are all of one colour - all red or all black. I've found that colour-coding the dice by type has a surprisingly large impact on the speed of play, and especially for new players. Still, a mismatched set would be significantly more expensive, so...)

Both boxes also include character tokens and a battlemat. In the case of the Red Box, these consist of the traditional "pog" tokens that lie flat, and a paper battlemat with scenes printed on both sides. They're nice, and functional. In the Beginner Box, they have instead included thick cardboard "pawns" and plastic bases, giving a more 3-dimensional effect. Additionally, the battlemat is printed on thick card, with one side showing a dungeon scene and the other being blank (and suitable for marking with either wet- or dry-erase markers). In terms of the tokens, there's frankly very little difference - my preference is for the pawns, but it's a marginal thing. However, the Beginner Box battlemat is clearly the better of the two - both because it is sturdier, and also because the blank side provides better opportunities for reuse.

Both boxes also provide a small number of blank character sheets. In both cases, the sheets are fine, though they lean rather towards the "spreadsheet style" of all post-3e versions of D&D. That's a weakness in the game, though, and not something that these boxes could fix.

The first key area where the boxes diverge comes here. The Red Box supplements each character sheet with a set of power cards, providing a nice, if limited, set of powers for each class. These are a really nice addition; it would have been good had the Beginner Box been able to include spell cards.

Conversely, the Beginner Box provides character sheets for four pre-gen characters, one of each of the "big four" classes. However, these are not simply pre-filled character sheets - in each case the sheet is presented at the centre of a four-page spread, with the borders being used to explain key sections of the character sheet. This is a spectacularly good idea. Hopefully, when WotC do the 5e Introductory Box, they'll do the same.

Each box also includes a couple of flyers, giving instructions on how to use the set, links to further materials, and the inevitable adverts for the 'real' version of the game. Nothing much to see here.

So, until this point, there's really not a lot to swing it one way or another. The Pathfinder box has a slight edge in terms of content, but the D&D set has a big advantage in terms of cost (since it costs half as much). And, in each case, there are some components that may see reuse - dice, tokens, and battlemat.

And now we get to the 'meat' of the products: the rulebooks.

In each case, the sets include a Player's Book and a DM's Book (though they may not be called that). That's about as far as the similarities go, though.

The Red Box Player's Book is a 32-page "choose your own adventure" book that also doubles as character creation rules. You step through a very simple adventure about goblins attacking a caravan, and the decisions you make define your character - if your first impulse is to cast a spell, you're a Wizard... and so on.

This is okay for first use, but not so good beyond that. Once you've created that first character and need to create your second, you don't really want to be attacked by goblins again. And that's the extent of the Player's Book.

I have one other key criticism of the Player's Book, and the Red Box as a whole - when discussing actions that characters can take, there's a very distinct emphasis on using the power cards provided. You're expected and encouraged to stay "on book". But, of course, one of the very significant (and generally unfair) criticisms of 4e is that locking down all those powers stifles creativity by causing players to fixate on the cards. It was a real shame to see the Red Box explicitly encourage this.

The DM's Book picks up exactly where the other leaves off. It presents the DM with a starter adventure, then quickly presents the rules of the game, then presents another adventure, some monsters, some treasure, and then it's done.

I don't really have any great criticisms of the DM's Book. It does its job reasonably well. The end.

Where I do have a significant criticism of the Red Box is that it provides rules for levelling up the characters created, but only to 2nd level. Basically, it's a set that's good for three or four sessions, if that, and then you have to advance to the 'real' game.

Oh, there is one other criticism I would level: the adventures are presented in the now-defunct "Delve" format - every encounter area is presented across two full pages. This makes adventures easy to run, there's no denying. It also means that that first adventure takes up 14 pages - a crippling blow when space is at a premium.

By contrast, the Pathfinder books are much more what I expected from my experience with the old Red Box - the Player's book opens with a very short "choose your own adventure", then presents character creation rules (with 3 races, 4 classes, a limited set of skills, feats, and spells), rules for levelling up, combat rules, and so on.

The DM's book is likewise as I would expect - a couple of pregenerated adventures, a limited bestiary, some magic items. It's all laid out concisely and clearly, despite the greater mathematical complexity of Pathfinder over 4e.

Simply put, the Pathfinder box makes much better use of space, with the consequence that the box includes rules for advancing as far as 5th level - the set is good for several months of play.

But... the Beginner Box commits what I consider to be the cardinal sin of designing an Introductory Box. Because of the space constraints, it is inevitable that the box has to include a cut-down ruleset, and so things like disarm, sunder, and grapple are omitted. That's fine - there's nothing wrong with a cut-down ruleset. But what it should never be is an incompatible ruleset. A player who has used the Introductory Box to learn the game should be able to sit down at a table with a group using the 'real' version of the game and understand what's going on; he should not have to unlearn what he has learned.

But the Beginner Box omits attacks of opportunity (good idea), but does so in a manner incompatible with the 'real' game - moving past an opponent is unimpeded. Fixing this would have required the introduction of the five-foot step into the game (itself a weakness of post-3e D&D, but that's an aside), but failing to do so is a major weakness in the box.

(In fairness, I should also note that the Red Box contains a handful of discrepancies with Essentials, and of course several of the powers have since been errata'ed. However, the differences here are rather more minor.)

Conclusion

Ultimately, both sets aim to do the same thing, and they do so in extremely similar ways. It is the details of how they go about their task that are key.

And in that regard, the Pathfinder Beginner Box simply blows the 4e Red Box out of the water. By making better use of the space, and thus being able to present the game up to 5th level, they've provided a set that allows new players to get really comfortable with the system before they have to upgrade, and face up to those 1,000 pages of reading. By contrast, the Red Box is very much a "pay-for preview" - it's a product to be used a couple of times and then discarded.

This is not to say that the Pathfinder set is perfect. As I noted, it commits one of the cardinal sins. Additionally, it is rather hampered by the high level of complexity of the 'real' game itself - it was always a really big ask to present a coherent Introductory Set when the core rules run to nearly 1,000 pages.

(My overwhelming impression of the Red Box, as with the DDI, and as with 4e itself, is one of disappointment - not at the quality of the product itself, but that it represents such a missed opportunity. Until the Pathfinder set, the game hadn't had a really good Introductory Box for decades, and a really good set could have done wonders for the game. As it is, this wasn't that product, it failed to recapture the millions of lapsed gamers they wanted, and now the opportunity is lost.)

My final thought is this: if you have a young relative who you think might like the game (a nephew, say), the best way to introduce them to the game remains to do it yourself - teach them the game yourself, take them through some introductory adventures, and then ease them into a group. And, of course, the game to teach is the one that you prefer.

However, if life doesn't permit you to do this, then an Introductory Box is the next best thing. And here, my recommendation is clear - get the Pathfinder set.

What if? Spellbooks

Under 3e Rules as Written, when a PC wizard captures a spellbook from an enemy wizard, he is not able to use it right away. Instead, he must first decipher the spell (read magic) then learn the spell (Spellcraft check), then copy the spell into his own book (100gp per page, one page per level, and IIRC one page per day). After which, he must consult his spellbook every day to prepare the spell, and has no further use of the captured book - he can sell it on to recoup his costs.

But what if...?

• The requirements to decipher and learn spells were the same, though spells could only be learned during downtime (between adventures). However, the requirement to copy spells is removed.
• Captured spellbooks were prohibitively expensive to copy - say 1,000gp per page and one month per page, because they must be copied exactly and with lots of rare materials.
• Between adventures, Wizards were assumed to refresh their memory of all their spellbooks. During adventures, he can prepare any spell from any book he owns, without needing to carry his books with them.
• If a Wizard lost a spellbook, and so couldn't refresh his memory of it between adventures, he lost access to the spells it contained, and would then have to relearn them if he acquired a new copy.

Additionally, spells would be split up into three categories: common spells (those in the PHB), uncommon spells (those in the Spell Compendium), and unique spells (everything else, notably the Complete Book of Eldritch Might).

When the Wizard levels up, he is allowed to add four spells to his spellbook (as normal, except it's normally two), but these have to be common spells - chosen from the PHB.

Uncommon spells are those found in rare tomes, but there are multiple copies of them floating around. So, if a Wizard captures a book containing these spells then it's a good find... but there's no guarantee he won't run into another Wizard with the same spell. Additionally, if a Wizard wishes to explicitly research an uncommon spell, he may do so - the nature of the spell is well enough known that dedicated effort can unlock it.

Unique spells are just that - there's only one copy of each of these spells floating around, so if the PC Wizard has it, he can be sure nobody else can match him!

(Under this model, it wouldn't be possible to learn a spell from a scroll. Under strict 3e RAW, this is actually already the case - the strict rule is that scrolls can be used only to aid in spell research. However, I don't think anyone actually uses that rule.)

The effects of all of this should be primarily flavourful, although one key advantage is that the Wizard ceases to be so utterly dependent on his one and only spellbook. In terms of flavour, it means that Wizards have a strong incentive to seek out new spellbooks to find lost and unique spells. It also means that if the Wizard does get his hands on such a book, he doesn't need to spend huge amounts of money adding it to his own book before he can use it.

(I would probably also match this with an adjustment to the starting spellbook - instead of getting all the 0-level spells for free, I'd probably change that to 6+Int mod.)

While I'm on the topic - Clerics and Druids

Of all the classes in the PHB, the Cleric and Druid are both probably the most powerful, the ones that gain most from additional supplements, and also the most difficult to play. The reason for this is simple: they gain access to all the spells on their list, of which there are a huge number. And if you add the Spell Compendium of other books, they automatically gain access to those spells as well.

(The same also applies to Rangers and Paladins, of course, but to a lesser extent.)

Fundamentally, I'm inclined to do the same for Clerics and Druids as I've just done for Wizards - they too must keep a record of their known spells (in a canon for Clerics, or in the form of stone tablets/wood carvings/whatever for Druids). And as they level up they, too, add more spells to their selection, or can learn yet more by capturing holy works from other casters.

(This probably works best in a setting that doesn't have strictly defined gods, or one where one of the underlying mysteries is that the gods are a front - there's no difference between a Cleric of Pelor and one of Vecna because they're both actually tapping into some grand, impersonal source of divine magic.)

Building a Better Adventure

If there is one area of GMing in which I feel I need to hone my skills, it is in the creation of adventures, and especially adventures intended for campaign play. In general, I do pretty well with rules knowledge, I'm pretty good at setting a scene, at pacing a combat, and can generally run an enjoyable session. And adventures for one-shot games are likewise okay, for the most part, as these are much more linear than those intended for campaign play.

So, I've been musing on how to build a better adventure. I think I'll post a few times on the subject...

(I should note: I won't be dispensing any holy writ here. To a large extent, these are my thoughts on how I can create better adventures. They're ideas that may not even work, at all, even for me.)

My starting point for all of this was to look at a lot of published adventures, notably those from Paizo Publishing as part of their Pathfinder Adventure Path line. By and large, these are considered excellent adventures, so they should be a decent place to start. I've also thought quite extensively about the WotC published adventures, which mostly range from 'shocking' to 'poor' quality - there are a tiny number of good adventures that serve as shining exceptions. So, that's where I'm going to start:

Background

Most modern published adventures start with a long section on adventure background, in which they explain how things came to be the way they are - they explain how the dungeon was built, they explain the motivations of the villain, etc.

It's all stirring stuff, of course, and quite an interesting read. It's also largely irrelevant in play - the players never really become aware of this, and the background seldom influences much of what actually happens, so it never again comes up.

Now, that may suggest that that material can just be dropped - if it's irrelevant then it's just wasted words, and if it's just wasted words then they can be cut. However, I would suggest the opposite - that the background should exist, but that the adventure should be built to make it a lot more relevant.

It's also worth noting that there are three kinds of background: there's the background that the adventure writer needs to know in order to create the adventure, there's the background that the GM needs to know in order to make sense of the adventure, and there's the background that should be given to the players to set the scene. Very often, adventures provide a combination of the first and second, while ignoring the third altogether.

I would suggest that when building an adventure, the designer should first start with a "requirements spec" for the adventure background, quickly sketching out the key salient points. When building the adventure, this should always be borne in mind - everything that is relevant in the background should have some expression in the adventure, while there should be nothing significant in the adventure that is not in the background.

So, if the background makes mention of an ancient lost love of the villain, there must be some mechanism for the PCs to find this out and apply the knowledge; conversely, if the background doesn't mention an ancient lost love, then there shouldn't be one in the adventure!

The other two types of background should then probably be written quite late on in the process, once the adventure is settled, and any changes required are fed back to the "designer's background". The GM's background can then be presented much as it is now, although probably in an abridged form (just the key facts are needed, really).

However, in addition to this, there should be a section for PC knowledge (the player's background mentioned above). This should contain of several lists of facts - one for Common Knowledge about the adventure, one for each of the 'lore' skills (the Knowledges, plus Gather Information, and anything else that is relevant), and one for each 'special skill' that applies (Bardic Knowledge, Artificer's Knowledge, etc).

I'm torn as to whether you should just give these out to the appropriate characters at the start of the adventure, if you should expect players to ask, or if they should ask and then roll. My inclination is to err towards just giving the information out, as otherwise they're likely not to know to ask.

(For added fun, some of the low-DC entries can contain false information. Even better, some of the entries could contain contradictory information, leaving the players to figure it out for themselves. But maybe that's just cruel...)

There are several advantages of giving out these "knowledge blocks":

• As with the "five things you know..." lists, they provide a lot of information in a small space.
• They help set the scene for the adventure.
• They reward those players who had their character invest in 'lore' skills, rather than the more obvious Athletics and Find Traps skills.
• They can then serve as clues for the various mysteries that are going to exist later in the adventure.

Plot Hooks and Goals

Most published adventures give the PCs a clear reason to be there, and a clear objective in the adventure. Some go a little further, giving alternative hooks that the GM can use, but these tend to amount to the same thing, since the adventure tends to be rather static in its construction.

I'm inclined to think that a more satisfying adventure is likely to result if the PCs instead have several goals in the adventure. Especially if those goals are then to some extent opposed, and especially if different PCs have different goals in the dungeon and those are opposed. That way, the PCs have to determine which of their priorities is most important; and that in turn means that they have to roleplay.

Tracking Progress

The last of my three points (and the last point for now), concerns the PCs' progress through the adventure. Very often, published adventures are basically static - the players clear out a bit of the dungeon and then retreat; once they've recovered they pick up where they've left off. And so on, until the adventure is done. Huzzah!

But that's almost non-sensical in its implementation, and in any case a much more satisfying experience is surely possible.

Instead, the adventure should provide a mechanism for tracking the PCs' progress towards their various goals, and provide feedback on the same. This allows for them to adjust their strategy, to reap the rewards of partial success, and is also generally more realistic.

Of course, the consequences of their actions need not all be positive, and indeed those consequences should generally be logical, but need not be obvious...

Imagine an adventure where the villagers ask the PCs to deal with a troublesome orcish tribe. So, the PCs, as is their wont, immediately set off to the orcish lair to kick butt. Of course, after the officially-approroved four level-appropriate encounters they retreat to rest and regroup...

Whereupon the orc king calls in his outriders, and launches a massive reprisal assault on the village. And so, suddenly instead of a bog-standard dungeon crawl, we have the PCs beating back an assault by overwhelming forces, plus the inevitable reprisals...

If the PCs instead sneak into the orcish lair and assassinate the orcish king, then all hell break loose - the orcs split into many factions each doing their own thing. And so, we have a much smaller assault on the village, many of the orcs are killed fighting other orcs, and some orcs simply leave. Of course, the eventual winner is most likely an even more bloodthirsty brute than the old king, and he has to show his power by smashing the village...

Alternately, if the PCs choose to spend some time hunting down and ambushing the orcish raiding parties, they can keep their presence hidden for a time, whittle away the orcish forces, and thus make ready for their final assault. Sure, it doesn't have the same visceral appeal as the other two approaches... but isn't it the player's choice whether to go for the glory or to take the slow and steady route?

(Even better is if you have multiple factions at play - perhaps the PCs ally with the orc king's son to arrange a coup... of course, they then have to watch for a sudden but inevitable betrayal. Or, if they ally with the lizardmen against the orcs, what happens when the lizardmen start to get too bold? Or, even better, what happens if some well-meaning but foolish young villagers decide to help by wiping out a party of 'monsters' - the village's lizardmen allies?)