The Christmas Game 2015: Memoirs of a Companion

Tuesday saw me running my final game for the year, the sixth annual "Christmas Game". It has become quite the tradition! And, as is also somewhat traditional, we once again played a "Firefly" one-shot. This time, the crew were that of Serenity, but updated for a decade of life after the events of the film of the same name. So, Mal was still recovering from his long incarceration on Perdition, Zoe had spent the decade raising her daughter Emma on Tombstone, and Jayne had become quite the big man - captain of his own vessel.

Unfortunately, as also seems to now be something of a tradition, we once again had a no-show for the event. I haven't had a chance to speak to the player involved, so it's entirely possible that there was a good reason for this absence; I simply don't know. This meant that we had four players instead of the hoped-for five, but that wasn't the worst thing in the world. The chosen characters were Mal, Simon, Jayne, and Kaylee.

The plot of the episode was fairly straightforward: Inara was dying, and the only sure place to get the medicines that she needed was from the Companion Guildhouse on Sihnon. And so the Crew had to plan and execute a heist. In doing so, they learned some more about the backstory of Inara, and some of the secrets of the Guild - some of them less than appealing.

The story was structured, as usual, with four distinct acts. The first act opened in Serenity's med-bay with Inara's collapse. It then proceeded with the journey to Sihnon, and the gathering of the Crew once more, as Serenity was joined by Jayne's Violet and Zoe's Mutt to form a little armada. The Crew then worked out the first details for their plan to break in.

The second act took in the peaceful facade of the Guildhouse exterior - the perfectly manicured gardens, the lovely pagodas where Companions are trained and where they meet their guests. The Crew chose a two-pronged approach: they sent Emma in to the Guild as a would-be Companion in training (much against Zoe's better judgement!), and they sent Jayne in to bid as a prospective Danna for a newly-minted Companion. Jayne was outbid by one of the villains of the piece.

The third act then saw the Crew sneak past the facade of the Guildhouse and into the underground facility where they keep their administration and catering facilities, their medical facility, and their blackmail material. Once there, they found the drugs they needed... but alas they had caused enough chaos that they were apprehended by security and the head of the House.

And so the fourth act saw the Crew improvising - they took the Guildmistress hostage for a moment, they turned the head of security, they ran off in several different directions (most of them wrong), and they even found time to deal with a sudden but inevitable betrayal by one of their own. In the end, they survived and even secured what they needed, but at a terrible cost: Jayne had to sacrifice his Violet to the Alliance. He even had to make a terrible choice: he could rescue his collection of guns or the money he had made in the last decade, but not both. In the end, he chose sentiment.

But the other thing I built into the session was five "interludes" - scenes taken from Inara's backstory that made up the Memoirs of the episode title. For each of these, except for the first, I passed Inara off to one of the players to have that player fill in on the young Inara's thoughts or choices. So we saw the young Inara joining the Guild for the first time and leaving behind her mother. Then we saw the aftermath of her completing her training and her first Danna (that same villain of the piece mentioned above). Then her meeting with a Guild doctor on Ariel while the rest of the Crew was busy infiltrating a hospital. And then her decision to finally break with the Guild, because Mal was imprisoned and she was needed to help free him.

The final scene of the game was the fifth and final interlude, which actually stepped back before the third. This was Inara's departure from the Guildhouse in order to travel the 'Verse for a while, by which point it was actually quite clear just why she needed to make that choice and just what she left behind her - and that despite it never quite being said.

I was extremely pleased with the way this episode all played out. Once again, we had a very strong group of players together, and they grabbed hold of their characters extremely quickly. It was a lot of fun, and it felt like something that might well appear on the show.

(I was also pleased with the "paths not taken" - I didn't know exactly what the Crew would do, but I'd prepared plenty of options. And so when they were discussing their plans, there wasn't any point at which I was completely off-book. Which is good. Basically, I managed to hit pretty much exactly the right amount of preparation. Though I do now have one or two ideas how to streamline things even more...)

And that was that - a very successful game to come to the end of the year. Hurrah!

Reminder to Self: Sometimes, You've Just Got to Go For It

I've been having a spot of existential doubt: in the last few months there have been a few game sessions that I've not really been happy with, to the extent that one session got postponed because I just didn't have the time to prepare well enough to be sure of doing a good job. And I've been having some difficulties getting the Christmas Game into any sort of a shape that I'm happy with.

But the first and most important prerequisite for running a good game is this: you first have to run a game.

That's really the core issue - if you don't run the game at all, it can't be a good game. But, sometimes, regardless of the initial signs, the magic can happen such that what might have been an uninspired session turns into a great story that is fondly remembered for years to come.

And so the crucial next step with the Christmas Game is not to write the perfect adventure, or the perfect set of characters to go with it... initially, it is just to write any version of the adventure. It can then be fixed in the edit.

Practically a New Person

This year's Christmas Game is another Firefly one-shot. It takes place thirteen years after the events of the movie "Serenity", and features the crew of that ship engaged in their usual mix of hijinks and desperate improvisation.

As a consequence of some time having passed in the setting, and also due to some of the revised roles taken on by the characters, it had been my intention to modify the various characters slightly for use in the one-shot. Thus they would remain largely recognisable, but there would also be a clear sense of growth.

However, as I proceeded to make the relevant changes, I quickly found that this was a less-than-ideal approach. Some of the new Distinctions just don't align at all well with the character's skills, and in some cases (notably River), the skills assigned by default don't match her new role at all.

As a consequence, I'm now planning a more or less complete rebuild of the characters for this one-shot, effectively recreating them as a new person for this session.

Mal: The captain of Serenity has spent the better part of the last thirteen years in solitary confinement on Perdition. For most of that time, the one thing that kept him going was the knowledge that Zoe simply would not abandon him to his fate and that therefore he just had to wait for a rescue. In the end, he was rescued two years ago by a crew of mercenaries hired by Inara and Simon. Reunited with his crew, he has found that Zoe did indeed leave him to his fate, a matter that sticks in his craw rather.

Mal's revised Distinctions will be Ship's Captain (because he is), Unresolved Issues (or similar) to reflect his being left behind, and Lost a Step (or similar) to reflect his ordeal on Perdition.

Zoe: There was only one thing that could take Zoe from Mal's side, and that was the birth of her daughter Emma Washburne. Zoe has thus spent the last decade or so serving as the sheriff on the moon Tombstone, and for most of that time believed that Mal was dead. When news reached her that her captain had been freed, she immediately disentangled herself from her new life, and she and Emma headed back to the Black.

Zoe's revised Distinctions are Backwater Sheriff, Mama Bear, and Steady.

Jayne: When Serenity was identified as the most wanted boat in the 'Verse, and when the jobs dried up, Jayne decided the time had come for him to leave. He has spent the last decade bouncing around from job to job without any great direction. He's now captain of his own ship, with a hotshot mechanic, and a rotating crew of ne'er-do-wells. But word has reached him that an old friend is dying, and his conscience (Kaylee) has been nagging him, and so he's heading back for one last job.

Jayne is probably the least changed of the characters: his Distinctions of Crude, Mercenary, and Family Ties can all still apply.

Simon: No longer on the run, Simon spent some time considering whether simply to return home with River. But when Mal was captured, he found a new purpose: to become the saviour of the man who once saved him. He has spent a decade working closely with Inara, building up a network of contacts and becoming a veritable mastermind, all with the aim of bringing the captain home. Alas, this all came with a cost - Simon's relationship with Kaylee broke down very early on, driving the mechanic from the ship. Simon is therefore wracked with both guilt and loss as a result of this mistake.

Simon's new Distinctions are Ship's Doctor, Mastermind, and Family Ties.

River: Unlike Simon, River never had any intention of going home. Instead, she has found a new family on Serenity, and a new place behind the controls. She's been the pilot of that boat for some years now, and has developed quite a connection to the old girl.

River is probably the most changed of the characters, because as written she completely lacks any skills in Fight, Pilot, or Operate. These will need changed, and she should also have Serenity added as a Signature Asset. Her revised Distinctions will be Government Experiment, Ship's Pilot, and Reader.

Kaylee: Once upon a time, it seemed that no power in the 'Verse could stop Kaylee being cheerful, and certainly nothing could take her away from Serenity. But these were both proven wrong when Simon became obsessed with rescuing Mal Raynolds. He managed to deeply offend Kaylee and in fact drove her away from her home. Heartbroken, Kaylee went to work with Jayne, and has been serving as his conscience as well as his mechanic.

Like Jayne, Kaylee is largely unchanged: her Distinctions remain Ship's Mechanics, Sweet & Cheerful, and Everything's Shiny. Even her abiding love for Serenity, reflected in her Signature Asset, remains unchanged - while she cares for Jayne's ship, you never forget your first love.

Inara: The former Companion is dying, and serves an expository role in this game. As such, she won't be available as a PC.

Emma Washburne: The daughter of Wash and Zoe, Emma is being dragged across the 'Verse by her mother. She doesn't know it, but she was actually delivered by Simon and cared for by the crew of Serenity in her earliest days. But for the past years she has lived on Tombstone, and is less than pleased at being taken from the only home she remembers. Plus, her mother is way over-protective.

Emma has inherited more from her father than she knows: her Distinctions are Ship's Pilot, A Little Nervous, and Wet Behind the Ears.

Aki Ross: When Kaylee left, Serenity foud herself in need of a new mechanic. Inara therefore contracted Aki Ross, a no-nonsense gal with a list of recommendations longer than your arm. Aki barely talks, and never about her past, but she's a calming influence on the ship with much the same demeanour as the late Shepherd Book.

Aki's Distinctions are Ship's Mechanic, Mysterious Past, and Steady.

(With five players and nine members of the Crew - eight possible PCs - I don't know quite which set of PCs I'll end up with. I think my "ideal cast" would be Mal, Zoe, Emma, Simon, and Kaylee since that probably gives the maximum scope for intra-party strife. But it should work okay with most combinations - maybe not Jayne, Kaylee, River, Aki, and Emma, but I think that's unlikely.)

Firefly: The Knitted Jumper Caper

I have a quiet challenge that I've set myself: to find the thinnest possible premise from which I can spin a workable game adventure. The adventure based on the exhibition of Egyptian burial art was easy. The adventure based on the 'ghost' underground station they found in London is likewise easy. The adventure based on the Women's Institute and their charitable endeavours? That's a little harder.

So, anyway, I had this idea. And I thought it was a good idea, one that would give plenty of adventure for a three-hour game session, where the villain was suitably psychotic, and it was all good fun. My one concern was that the players might decide I'd just gone too far this time.

What I didn't expect was for one of the players to say, "oh, they're probably smallpox blankets" within ten seconds of the Crew getting the cargo they were to transport, followed by another noting that harmless old Ethel was clearly an evil assassin. Pretty much the only thing they didn't immediately have was why.

Still, it was a fun session - the big advantage of Firefly is that the characters do a good job bouncing off one another, which means that with a good group you can get a fun session almost regardless. And so we had balls of purple wool being handled like soft, squishy grenades, we had the evil alliance between Kaylee and Ethel (which River detected based on their mutual cheerfulness), we had an asset named "The Crate Escape"...

It was a good session to end the year on. And now the Lost Episodes take a break until January...

On Hidden Rules

Over on ENWorld, I managed to get myself embroiled in a debate about the value of 'hidden' rules - those rules in the game that aren't immediately obvious but which only become apparent with system mastery.

It's fair to say I'm not a fan. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that if something is important enough to be a rule it should be spelled out in big, clear letters; and if it's not important enough to do that, it's not important enough to be a rule.

Now, it's worth noting that a rule may be 'hidden' for several reasons:

A rule may be hidden because the game is badly organised. This is quite common in early editions of the game, where things were gradually added as the game was crafted, largely on the basis that they were 'cool'. I'm inclined to think that if there are rules hidden due to bad organisation of the rulebooks, that's a design flaw that should be corrected up at the next reasonable opportunity.

A rule may be hidden because the rules-text is badly phrased and inpenetrable. The classic example of this is the rules for initiative in 1st Edition, where it's entirely possible to read the text carefully, and several times, and still not understand what it's getting at. (See also the 5e rules for creating monsters.) Again, I'm inclined to think that any such instances are a design flaw, and should be corrected at the next reasonable opportunity.

A rule may turn out to be hidden because there are in fact two contradictory rules and it's not clear which takes precedence. Or a rule may turn out to be hidden because there are multiple rules in play and the interactions (or order in which they should be applied) is not clear. And, sure enough, I'm inclined to think this is a design flaw. The authors should consider the situation, work out what they intended, and clear it up at the next reasonable opportunity.

But all of those are basically just mistakes that can, and should, be fixed when possible. What really annoys me are those cases where the designers have deliberately hidden rules away, as Easter Eggs to reward those players who develop "system mastery".

3e was probably the worst edition for this. A good example was that they made the longsword the best melee weapon (in 3.0e - it changed in 3.5e), because it did the most damage for a one-handed weapon (allowing a shield), and had a 19-20/x2 critical which meant that you tended to get less 'wasted' damage if you rolled a crit against a low-hp opponent.

There are two things wrong with this thinking, though. The first, and lesser, problem is that the designers didn't actually have as much control as they thought they did - the fact that the longsword was better than the battleaxe was a trivial nonsense next to the difference between 3e casters and non-casters - who cares about marginally more damage when the Wizard can move mountains with a word? And for all that the designers have very cleverly built in this 'best' melee weapon, they seem to have utterly missed that cheap magic item creation has the consequence of removing the constraints of Vancian casting - the only thing keeping those casters in check.

But the bigger problem is that the designers didn't seem to consider that adding hidden rules, and rewarding system mastery, in this manner makes the game harder for the DM to run. And the DM isn't a competitor in the game, nor a competitor with WotC (in any sense) - one of the purposes of the DMG should be to make the game as easy as possible for the DM to run. If there are any hidden rules there for the players to find, those same rules should be spelled out very clearly in the DMG, complete with their explanations.

Another example of a hidden rule in 3e perhaps explains this better: there's a convention in the spell design that a spell either requires a touch attack roll or a saving throw (almost never both). Spells that require a touch attack will almost always hit, since touch ACs are generally poor, and so they do "1dX plus level" damage. Conversely, spells that require a save a much less likely to hit, and so they do "XdY" damage - they're vastly more damaging. But this convention is never actually spelled out, even in the DMG where it talks about creating new spells.

(And, consequently, when later designers started adding new spells, they seem not to have known about that convention, and therefore tend not to apply it - with the consequence that many newer spells are simply better than the PHB ones.)

Or, again, there's a convention that spells that do ability score damage (such as ray of exhaustion) can't reduce a target's ability scores to 0, since that would lead either to death or complete incapacitation on the part of the target. But, again, this isn't spelled out, and so there's a spell in the "Spell Compendium" that does massive Dex damage with no cap, and therefore allows mid-level Wizards to trivially one-shot dragons.

Oops.

(There's also the Wealth by Level table, which for years led to DMs being accused of not giving out enough treasure, indeed to the extent that Pathfinder now encodes that DMs should give out a 'right' amount of treasure. Only it turns out that WbL wasn't any sort of target amount, but rather just the likely outcome of using the provided treasure tables. And, indeed, DMs certainly shouldn't have let new high-level PCs start with the value given on the table, but more likely around 60% of that value. Though in that case I'm not certain whether that was a deliberately hidden rule or something that was only realised later.)

Now, it is worth noting that, of course, there will always be some hidden rules. The complex nature of the overall ruleset, coupled with the fact that the designers are human and therefore imperfect, guarantees that this will be the case. So I'm not foolish enough to request they be removed entirely. However, while I'm not going to call for perfection, I think it is reasonable to ask for better - and to keep asking for improvements as time goes on. After all, wouldn't we all like a game that is exactly the same... but better?

Ease of Use in 5e

The more I've run 5e, the more frustrating I've found the experience. Don't get me wrong - I really like the game, the rules, and the vast bulk of the experience. But the more I've played, the more I've found that the game itself gets in my way. For example:

The Character Sheet. I've complained about this before, and it's still true - the official character sheet for 5e sucks. I still haven't found a really good one, largely because I haven't looked very hard, but the one that we have is certainly not it.

The index. The index of the PHB is bad - it's full of entries reading "see something else" where, frankly, it would just be easier to give the page number. Perhaps the worst example is "Dash".

(Of course, in the 21st century what we should really have is an easily-accessed online database of all the rules, all painstakingly hyperlinked and searchable. Physical books, and even PDFs, are actually entirely the wrong format for this game.)

The monster creation rules. For the new Eberron campaign, I had a pretty clear idea of the monsters I wanted to introduce. Unfortunately, while all of these exist in 3e, none of them yet exist in 5e, which meant I needed to do a conversion. So, I sat down with the 5e DMG... and spent an hour scratching my head. It turns out that the monster creation rules are actually pretty damn good, but they're almost completely backwards, which is pretty damning.

The binding. I paid $50 for my DMG, and by the time I had finished my read-through, and before I gave it any in-game use at all, there were already pages coming loose. Which is absolutely inexcusable in and of itself, but seriously impacts my ability to use the book (since I'm constantly worried it's about to come apart).

I still like 5e. I still think they've created a damn good game. But at this point I kinda wish they'd take the books back to the design stage and produce a revised edition, and in particular a revised edition with no rules changes whatsoever but carefully rewritten to maximise ease of use.

Well, That Didn't Go So Well...

Last night was the second chapter of my "Eberron: Dust to Dust" campaign, and unfortunately was the second game in the last few months that just didn't seem to work (the first being the Firefly episode "Strawberries"). And, once again, the problems were entirely on the GM side of the screen. (Frustratingly, the problem was also not a lack of preparation - I actually had both enough material prepared and also the relevant material prepared. It just didn't sing.)

The fundamental and biggest problem in the evening was that this session was very definitely a railroad. The players basically had no meaningful choices to make. Unfortunately, I suspect that may have been inherent to the adventure I'm running - I needed to introduce the Draconic Prophecy, the Spell-weaver, and take the PCs to the haunted Lightning Rail station, and in the time allocated that basically meant hitting each of these in turn. Which means that the important lesson there is simple - next time, run a different adventure!

The second problem, though, is an ongoing issue I've found - I don't do well at handling "exploration" scenes. I'm mostly okay with combat (though I'm increasingly coming to think low-level 5e sucks in that regard), and I'm going with interaction, but that exploration pillar is tripping me up. I'm definitely going to have to work on that quite urgently, as exploration plays a significant part in both the third chapter and also in the "Christmas Game" this year! But, for now, suffice to say that some scenes were utterly devoid of any tension, and any notions of resource management fell by the wayside pretty damn quickly.

Regarding low-level 5e combat: I've now run four sessions of 5e, all at low levels, and have had several combats in those sessions. And I'm just not terribly happy. Basically, 5e seems to have taken a significant retrograde step from 4e, and even from 3e and previous.

The issue is partly one of simplification. In theory, this is a good thing, since it frees the DM up from having so many minor issues to worry about, allowing him to worry about the "fun stuff". Which looks like it could well be great at slightly higher levels. But at low level neither the PCs nor the monsters really have many fun powers to play around with. And so a goblin is much like a chitine, is much like a skeleton, is much like a... while the PCs' tactical choices boil down to deciding which bad guy to attack. Even the 3e consideration of how best to achieve flanking is gone.

Fortunately, I think this should fix itself fairly rapidly, as the PCs quickly progress to higher levels and everything gets more interesting. At least, I hope that's the case. Otherwise, it does look like this may be my last-ever D&D campaign, which would be a real shame.

The End

I learned this morning that Margaret Weis Productions have effectively stopped production on any new "Firefly RPG" products. It's not clear whether this is a permanent change or a temporary hiatus, but it does mean that there's unlikely to be anything new for the game for at least a year.

Which is a real shame, as I very much enjoyed those books.

That said, I'm not sure there's really all that much that could be added: more adventures, of course, but beyond that?

Though, actually, there are at least two products I would have liked to see: a big, extensive 'atlas' of the The 'Verse, going into a lot more detail about the various worlds (although that's tricky to do, since ideally it should include material both from Firefly and Serenity, while the license only allows MWP to do the former), and a book on "Patrons, Fixers, and Pimps" (my title) about people who might want jobs done, people who are able to get jobs done, and the people who bring the two together. At present, the setting has Badger and Mingo and Fanty, but is otherwise somewhat lacking, so an expansion in this area would be welcome.

But the truth is I should be okay: by my count I have nine pre-gen "Firefly" episodes still unused, plus four (I think) "Serenity" episodes that I can convert. So that's enough material for more than a year of gaming even without adding any of my own episodes. And that's plenty.

But, still, it would have been nice to have a bit more to play with...

Dragonboobs

When WotC introduced Dragonborn to D&D in 4e (well, sort of - like so much else, it's complicated), they unleashed one of the fiercest but also the silliest arguments in D&D history. Because the illustrations of female Dragonborn were differentiated from the males by giving them boobs - and because they were clearly reptilian creatures, that was clearly absurd.

The reason it's an absurd argument is that these are fantastic creatures with a fantastic biology. Real-world reptiles are the way they are because they happened to evolve that way, but it's not hard to imagine that they could evolve along a different path in a different environment. And that's before we even get into the possibility of a creator deity declaring "let it be so."

Now, having said that, I do feel WotC missed an opportunity to do something different with the Dragonborn. Largely because I'm of the school of thought that non-human species should really be non-human, and that the more inhuman a species is, the more it should diverge from humanity. (And so, since elves and orcs can inter-breed with humans, that necessitates at least a physical compatibility, but there's no reason gnomes should, never mind Dragonborn, Shardminds, or Thri-kreen.)

So I would certainly have taken the Dragonborn in a different direction: rather than identify a female dragonborn by giving her boobs (and, in fairness, making her smaller than the males), I would instead have given the males a crest, much like we see in the animal world.

And, in a similar vein, I would vary the depictions for other species more significantly, also. Warforged and Shardminds would be entirely sexless, and not described as having "male or female personalities" (whatever that means). Elves, I think, would be matriarchal, with the females being larger and heavier than the males (this is already true of Drow, of course).

But there's no reason even to stop there. One could introduce a species where all PC members must be male or must be female (like the Khepri from "Perdido Street Station", where the males are all mindless drones, and so any PC would have to be female). Or, indeed, a species where sex remains undifferentiated until they enter a mating phase of their lifecycle, at which point part of the population each become temporarily male or female (and not necessarily the same each time). Or what have you.

Basically, as soon as you're talking about a non-human species, and especially once you're talking about fantasy biology, all bets are off.

Ultimately, my "non-humans should be non-human" position has a number of corollaries, some of which might be useful.

Firstly, because D&D is played by humans and therefore since even non-human D&D characters are played by human players, those D&D species should serve to highlight something about the human condition. Although there is a wide variety of human societies, by virtue of our biology we all have certain things in common - we all age and die relatively quickly; we're all driven to seek food, shelter, and sex; it's women who bear children; etc. But if we posit a non-human species with a different biology we can consider the "what if" for the case where one of these basics ceases to apply. What if elves are effectively immortal and so don't think about aging? What if plantmen have no need to seek food? What if shardminds have no interest in reproduction?

Secondly, I take the view that a choice of PC's race should be a matter of an instant - either the player comes to the process with a clear idea that "I want to play a {whatever}", or they should play a human. I particularly dislike the approach where the player chooses his class and then hunts about for the race that has the optimum ability score modifiers to suit that class.

(Crucially, though, I should note that I'm largely talking from a theoretical "white tower" point of view. In reality, players will choose their race by whatever means they wish, and I'd much rather they end up with a character they're happy with than some notion of 'pure' gaming.)

Thirdly, I'm inclined to think that the non-human species should be differentiated from humans in a handful of clear, and fairly significant, ways. An elf shouldn't just be a "human with funny ears", but neither is it a good idea to load them with a hundred tiny adjustments - better to give them four or five very clear differences.

And then, as a corrolary to that, pretty much all elven NPCs should therefore differ from human NPCs in those same ways, to build consistency in the world. An elven PC of course wouldn't be bound by those same things (since PCs are inevitably exceptional), but an elven PC probably should differ from the "human version" of the same character in a couple of ways, and those ways probably should bear some relation to the established facts - even if that relationship is to entirely subvert one of them.

(It probably goes without saying that I reject any claim that D&D is racist. It is, of course, entirely possible to play D&D in a racist manner by drawing lazy equivalences between certain species and real-world groups, but I don't accept that that is automatically the case, or even the case as-written. For the simple reason that I reject those equivalencies, and instead view the non-human species as being, well, non-human.)

Firefly: Bucking the Tiger

This month's "Lost Episode" was the final pre-gen adventure from the "Echoes of War" series - oddly, this one didn't make it into the compiled volume of adventures and so is only available as a PDF, which proved a major pain when I elected to print the damn thing prior to use. Oh well.

Anyway, the game had four players: Emma (Book), Josh (Jayne), Phil (Mal), and a newcomer to this game, Daniel (Inara). Which was certainly a decent set of characters, although at one point Phil did need to slip into Simon's skin for one of the scenes.

This is a fairly complex and meaty adventure, and so I was always a little concerned about our ability to fit it in to the allocated time. As it happened, we ran over, but only slightly - everything was wrapped up by about 10:45 instead of the projected 10:30. But I did have to cut out quite a lot of the subplots in order to make it work.

When reading through this adventure initially, I concluded that it was probably the best of the "Echoes of War" series, and I'm inclined to stick with this assessment. In particular, I like the way that it has a choice of subplots that can be resolved, meaning that the adventure will play out significantly differently for different groups.

That said, I'm not terribly happy with the way the adventure tried to resolve the mystery - in hindsight, I still think they'd be better going with the "Three Clue Rule" and leaving it as a player challenge, rather than using a special Complication to determine when a given NPC reveals their secrets. But it wasn't too bad, and did at least resolve quickly.

All in all, I was happy with this adventure, and happy also to come to the end of the "Echoes of War" series. Next month's adventure is "The Knitted Jumper Caper" which should be a nice slice-of-life episode to end the year - this will serve as something of an "end of season" show, albeit one of those end of season shows where the major plotlines have been resolved and so it's more denouement than climax. Which is fine.

And then next year we'll launch into the "Ghosts of the Black" adventures, interspersed with some homebrew and some of the other pre-gen episodes (for Firefly or, indeed, for Serenity). But that's all for the future...

Why Does D&D Not Have a Mageblade Class?

Way back in days of yore, the original version of D&D had an odd rule for elves - they advanced both as Fighters and Magic Users, somehow switching between the two at the start of adventures. In BECMI D&D, the Elf class was effectively what would be known as a Fighter/Mage in 1st and 2nd Edition... and, of course, 1st and 2nd edition had multiclass rules allowing demihuman PCs to advance in multiple classes at once - most notably the elven Fighter/Mage.

When the game moved on to 3e, though, the multiclass rules were changed so that a PC would at least start as a member of a single class. And although they could later pick up other classes, there was no equivalent of the classic Fighter/Mage, and so no real way to build the classic Elf of yore (at least not until you qualified for the Elritch Knight prestige class - or until the Duskblade was added very late in the edition). 4e, for its part, mostly got rid of multiclassing entirely, although it did later introduce hybrid classes which brought back that Fighter/Mage concept.

And now 5e has reverted to 3e-like multiclassing. It does, I should note, have an Eldritch Knight subclass for the Fighter, but...

(Oh, and Pathfinder is basically the same as 3e on this, except that it has the Magus in place of the Duskblade.)

What I've been wondering for a while is why WotC didn't introduce that 'missing' Mageblade class right at the start of 3e, thus plugging the gap left by that one tricky classic archetype.

(Indeed, I even wonder if adding that one class might have been enough to remove the need for multiclass rules entirely? It really was that one weird corner case that was left over from the legacy of the game, so adding a new class might have been enough to cover it.)

All that said, if I were now rebuilding D&D, I think I'd be going with a very different class line-up...

• Hero: A non-magical hero that combines the existing Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue.
• Wizard:: The practitioner of magic. Can be a prepared spellcaster (Wizard), a spontaneous caster (Sorcerer), or a 'channeller' (Warlock) depending on the player's preference.
• Witch Hunter: The Cleric rebuilt to be much more Van Helsing than currently. Forget the religious trappings of the Cleric, though - the character could be a priest like in the Exorcist, but doesn't have to be. Would still have access to magic, but it would be a learned magic rather than the gift of the gods, and certainly wouldn't trawl the Bible for suitable miracles to convert!
• Artificer: Or Alchemist or Mad Scientist, or... This is the character who draws his power from his gear, a la Iron Man.

In each case, the class should have builds available allowing them to dip into some of the lesser powers of other classes, allowing the Paladin to be built as a Hero (for example), but I don't think I would bother with multiclassing as such - the advantage of a class system is strong archetypes; if you want wholesale blending of archetypes, you probably want a point-buy system anyway.

Of course, that's just me. These days I don't really have any interest in building my own game. Much...

The Last Thing I'd Expect

When creating adventures, I genuinely try to cover a reasonable range of possible PC actions - maybe they'll fight the bad guys, maybe they'll negotiate, maybe they'll hide, maybe they'll try to trick them. If they do fight, maybe they'll go for a straight-up battle, maybe they'll try to arrange an ambush... Whatever, I try to cover the bases as well as I can.

Every so often, though, the PCs do something that takes me completely by surprise.

In the first session of "Eberron: Dust to Dust", the PCs had been dropped by a plot device into the foundations of Sharn. Off in one direction there were abandoned ruins of an old goblin settlement; from another they could hear (and indeed see) a patrol of Spider-eye Goblins coming in their direction.

So I'd considered various options: maybe they'd retreat into the ruins, maybe they'd hide, maybe they'd fight...

What I didn't expect was that they'd strike up a conversation with the goblins and agree to journey back with them into their lair. I mean, everything about that scenario positively screamed "It's a Trap!" (I think maybe I'll need to get an Ackbar mask for future cases like this.)

Anyway, the consequence of this was that rather than fighting the goblin patrol (which would have been a tough fight), they found themselves fighting a large part of the goblin tribe (which was an overwhelming fight). And so a TPK ensued...

... only it didn't. It turns out that the 5e encounter-building system is much more forgiving than I expected, especially when the party has a full complement of PCs. Consequently, they were (just barely) able to fight through well enough to buy themselves some time, and then they were able to retreat. Which is lucky, since it would have sucked for the first session of a campaign to result in a TPK!

Still, always fun when the PCs take you completely by surprise. And now I know I need to be better prepared for the next session...

Out of the Abyss

Disaster in the Last Chapter!

Okay, to review this I'm going to need to delve into spoilers. If you don't want to know, then here's the non-spoiler summary: this adventure starts spectacularly well, goes downhill a bit later on (but is still good), and then falls to pieces at the end. As such, I recommend it but with huge reservations.

From here on out, there are spoilers.

The adventure can broadly be split into three sections. Section one starts with the PCs as prisoners of the drow, and has them escaping and making their way to the surface. Section two starts with the PCs being recruited to venture back into the Underdark to find out what's going on, and gathering materials to help them fix it. And section three is a two-chapter climax of the campaign, consisting of the Fetid Wedding and the Rage of Demons.

Part One: Escape from the Underdark

As noted above, this section begins with the PCs as prisoners of the drow. They then escape, make their way through the Underdark, visiting many of the iconic sites in FR's version of that landscape, before finally escaping to the surface. Along the way, they encounter some significant signs that something is very, very wrong, and are chased throughout by drow intent on recapturing them. It covers about half of the book.

This section is absolutely brilliant from start to finish. It contains some of the best adventure material I've ever seen from WotC, ever, and features a lot of very alien settings and very strange creatures - exactly what I would expect from the Underdark, and especially an Underdark falling under the sway of the demon lords. This section also manages to present the PCs with many meaningful choices, rather than a simply railroad of scenes, and yet also manages to foreshadow events later in the campaign.

Basically, had I been reviewing this half of the campaign alone, I'd give it five stars without hesitation. I even rate it more highly than "Lost Mine of Phandelver" - although the adventure design is probably on a par with that adventure, it also gains points for novelty, while LMoP is deliberately quite mainstream in its content.

Part Two: Back Into the Depths

Unfortunately, the second half of the campaign isn't nearly so good. This section sees the PCs recuited by Bruenor Battlehammer to go back into the Underdark, find out what is going on down there, and hopefully put a stop to it. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, this section just doesn't have anything like the same flair to it as the first half. Off the top of my head, there are several weaknesses:

• Unlike the first half, this half's choices amount to "what order shall we do things"? The PCs basically have to go to the Zhentarim outpost, and from there they have to go to the Underdark library. There, they make contact with a duplicitious drow mage, and although they don't have to ally with him, the alternative is still that they need to perform the same ritual, just without his help. Then, they have to go get a bunch of ingredients, each of which is only really available in one place, so they more or less have to go to all of the locations detailed - as I said, they do get to choose what order to handle things.
• I found the level of detail in the second half fell short of what was needed. This was especially true of the incursion into Sorcere, which by rights should have had a full 32-page adventure (at least) to itself. But several other locations were similarly lacking - locations weren't mapped, events were presented in a very abstract manner, and so forth. I didn't notice this as a problem in the first half, which made it very noticable in the second.
• Following on from the above, I felt that the designers had clearly had a lot of good ideas, but I felt they weren't fleshed out enough. Basically, it felt like they were trying to fit too much adventure into too few pages. This wouldn't have been so noticable, but for the comparison with the first half.
• I believe this part of the adventure would prove very difficult to run. The adventure assumes here that the PCs would be accompanied by a great many NPC allies, none of whom were particularly fleshed out (again, unlike the NPCs in the first part). I'm really not sure what these allies really added to things, either - except perhaps warm bodies to soak up some of the incoming attacks. But with so many characters and so many factions to juggle... it really felt like it would be a chore, rather than a pleasure to run.
• The adventure provides a new downtime activity, establishing a way-station in the Underdark. This was actually a really great addition to the game... or it would have been. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no payoff for setting up way-stations - the adventure never talks about what happens to expedition morale if the supply lines get cut, or details what reinforcements PCs might get from their way-stations, or anything like that. It's a great idea that doesn't actually go anywhere.

But all of this pales next to...

Part Three: Disaster in the Last Chapter

The adventure has a two-part climax. The first part of this sees the PCs disrupting "The Fetid Wedding", a ritual by which one of the demon lords aimed to gain control over a huge fungal growth in the Underdark. Again, this is a really great idea, very atmospheric and exactly the sort of insanity an Underdark/demons adventure should feature.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work so well, for three reasons. Firstly, the demon lord in question is too powerful for the PCs to actually deal with. Therefore, the adventure introduces a neat deus ex machina to fix this - another demon lord appears out of nowhere to distract the first, allowing the PCs to deal with another part of the problem themselves. Ick.

Secondly, this episode takes place in an alternate plane, and any PC reduced to 0 hit points is therefore not killed, but instead wakes up unharmed back in their bodies. "It was all a dream" sucks in storytelling, and sucks no less in a published adventure.

And, thirdly, there's the question of what happens if the PCs fail? What happens if they are all reduced to 0 hit points? Well, the answer to that doesn't please either: if they fail, they've nonetheless done enough for that Underdark fungus to be able to throw off the demon lord itself. So, in effect, there are no stakes - the Players might as well go out for a coffee, let their PCs just soak up the damage until they all wake from their dream, and all will be well.

Lame.

And then comes the final chapter. The PCs conduct the long-promised ritual, they summon all of the demon lords to one place for the big finale...

and they then get to watch as these ultra-powerful NPCs battle things out amongst themselves. After all, one demon lord is too much for them to handle, so all of them together?

Now, in fairness, it's not quite like that - the adventure suggests instead that the PCs should instead face four 'lesser' combats while the demon lords fight it out, before facing a weakened Demogorgon at the end. But that still sucks: they're still effectively spectators.

There's also a sidebar that suggests the players should instead be given the demon lords to run, and the battle played out that way. This is much better, and the DM absolutely should do this. But it still sucks - at the climax of the campaign, our heroes who we have followed throughout the story are reduced to watching.

(Reading this, I actually wondered: is this adventure actually intended to be run? Or is it rather a 'storyline' presented more to be read and imagined? That would explain an awful lot - in addition to this problem, there's also the plethora of NPCs in the second section.)

But, fundamentally, I think the problem simply lies with the level range of the campaign - the demon lords are suitable opponents only for highest-level PCs (if even then), but the campaign was intended to run from 1st to 15th level, putting them well out of reach. So, really, what was wanted was instead a longer book to give it room to flesh out all these ideas, a longer level range, and therefore a delayed climax until 20th level. Alas, it was not to be.

Conclusion

I found it really hard to rate this one: the first half is outstanding, the second half merely good, and the climax terrible. So, where does that leave us?

In the end, I settled on recommending it, but...

It's worth the money for a read-through, and indeed for the first half. But as a complete campaign, it's flawed, probably fatally. Still, it's a step up even from "Princes of the Apocalypse", and so another improvement on "Tyranny of Dragons", so they're heading in the right direction.

An Initiative Variant

I've been noodling around a variant of the initiative rules that I'm considering for use. This one works best if there are multiple opponents to the PCs, ideally with as many monsters as there are PCs - it basically won't work with only one monster in play.

Anyway...

At the start of combat, each PC rolls initiative. The DM rolls initiative once, using the highest modifier from the applicable monsters.

If any PCs rolled a higher total than the monsters, those PCs each take their first turn, in the order in which they scored.

When the monster initiative total comes up, the DM takes a turn with any one of the monsters/NPCs.

Thereafter, the PCs and monsters alternate turns. If there's a mismatch in numbers, there may need to be a few turns where they "double up", but where possible these should be avoided.

(Note that if any PC or monster gets two turns in the round, these should be treated as two separate entities, one for each turn.)

So, for example, if the classic four-person party encounters four orcs, each PC rolls initiative while the DM rolls once. Let's assume the results are Rogue 15, Wizard 12, Orcs 11, Fighter 9, Cleric 2.

So, the Rogue goes first. Then the Wizard acts. Then the first orc acts. Then the Fighter, the second orc, the Cleric, and the third orc.

Then the Rogue acts again, as the first round is complete. Now the fourth orc takes his turn, followed by the Wizard, and so on. We now have a cycle going: PC, orc, PC, orc.

Eventually, one of the orcs gets taken out of play. At this point, the party "doubles up", so that the sequence becomes: Rogue, orc, Wizard, orc, Fighter, orc, Cleric, Rogue...

When the second orc falls, it's probably best if the order becomes Rogue, orc, Wizard, Fighter, orc, Cleric, Rogue... but that doesn't need to be the case - the point is that the PCs should have two "double turns" between orcish actions.

The big advantage of this approach is that it means that monster actions are staggered, even if there is a group of identical monsters. This means that you don't have the orcs acting once followed by four turns of the PCs responding to a static battlemat. The down-side is that it needs a bit more book-keeping, as it's important to make sure that the individual monsters each only act roughly as often as they should (this doesn't matter so much if the monsters are "four orcs", but it does if you have "orcish warboss, plus three minions").

One further caveat: in the case where the PCs gain surprise, I'd be inclined not to roll for the monsters at all. Instead, the PCs each act once, and then the top PC gets to act again... and then the monsters strike back. And likewise for the reverse case as well, of course - the monsters act once each and then the top PC acts.

I haven't tried this in actual play, though, so I'm not yet certain how it will work in practice. Hopefully, I'll find out fairly soon.

Some 5e Pet Peeves

I very much like 5e, and am looking forward to starting up my first full campaign in a couple of weeks. That said, there are a few things that bug me. Not enough to abandon the game, you understand, but enough to set my teeth on edge. For example:

• The Character Sheet: I spent a couple of frustrating hours at the week painstakingly entering the PCs for the new campaign into the PDF form character sheet. And my overwhelming impression after doing this is that I'm very glad I didn't spend hours whipping up an auto-calculating form from the sheet. Because the official 5e character sheet sucks. Some things that are quite important are in a teeny tiny space, some things that are unimportant have huge amounts of space, there's no space at all for some key things (such as weapon keywords), and the spell sheet is carefully designed to have too much space for Wizards, Bards and the like and not quite enough for Clerics and Druids. It's just annoying.
• Why are Wizards Proficient in Weapons: In days of yore, the various classes had different attack bonuses (BAB, or THAC0, or attack matrix, or whatever), and there was also a penalty associated with not being proficient with the weapon. In that model, it made sense that Wizards could be proficient in a weapon - they would thus avoid the penalty but still not be particularly good. But 5e has replaced the attack bonuses with a unified Proficiency Bonus, which by rights therefore should apply to "those things the class is good at". Characters who aren't proficient don't suffer a penalty; they just don't get the bonus, and so don't get anything. And under that model, then, Wizards really shouldn't have any weapon proficiencies, any more than Fighters should be proficient in magic. It's not what they're about, so why is the Wizard as good as the Fighter with a quarterstaff?
• Armour: Similarly, I'm a little peeved that 5e threw away one of the advancements of 4e, and switched back to having many different armours in each category, some of which are quite clearly than the others. 4e had it right on this one - all the Light armours should be equivalent, as should the Medium ones, as should the Heavy ones (and then differentiate with other traits for those with custom armour). This would also allow them to tie the armours into the same Proficiency Bonus mechanism as everything else: Light gives the bonus, Medium x2, and Heavy x3.
• Alignment: I've complained about this before. Now it has been removed from the mechanics of the game, and especially since Traits, Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws do it better, it's time to remove it from the game entirely.
• Multiclass hit points: 5e has the same flaw as 3e here, in that characters get max hit points at 1st level and then a lesser amount thereafter. This means a Wizard 1/Rogue 1 is different from a Rogue 1/Wizard 1. Fortunately, this is an easy one to fix, if it ever comes up at all.

Still, just a few annoyances, which is good - and nothing like the mess that was multiclass skill points for 3e...

Firefly: Broken Wing

Last night's game was the seventh "Lost Episode" and was the eighth session I've been involved in this year. It had many successful elements and was a good game, without being a classic.

The plot centred around our old friend Atherton Wing who, disgraced following the duel with Mal and blacklisted by the Companion's Guild, found himself ostracized from polite society. In order to buy his way back in, he contracted with the unregistered former Companion Rose, and things seemed to go well for a while. Until, that is, Rose betrayed him by stealing a large amount of money and, more importantly, some embarrassing documents. And so Ath found himself in need of someone to pose as a dire enemy while at the same time having a perverse sense of honour that would allow Ath to trust him. Of course, such people are vanishingly rare, so the list of candidates was short: Mal Reynolds.

The first success of the night, and perhaps the biggest risk, was that I decided to assign Atherton Wing as one of the potential PCs for the evening, and to recommend that he, Mal, and Inara were the best choices for the episode. The players proceeded to latch onto this, leading to some of the most amusing roleplaying of the Lost Episodes. Which was great, of course. (The risk there was that the players might not have run with it, and I'd have found myself painfully short of material for the evening. Lucky that didn't happen.)

The other character at the centre of this story was Rose, a former Companion turned con artist. However, Rose was a rather more sympathetic foil than Saffron, in that her motivations were driven more by previous pain than by simply wanting advantage. This led to the key scene of the session, after the Crew had captured Rose, and Inara was sent in to deal with the rogue former Companion.

It's fair to say I have some issues with Companions in the 'Verse. Largely because my touchstone for them is the Geisha, and my touchstone for them is "Memoirs of a Geisha". (Of course, "Memoirs..." is fiction, but so too are the Companions so I don't think that's a huge issue.) And I found that film hugely difficult to watch, it being a happy and romantic film... that is largely about child abuse and prostitution. (Consider: the lead character is adopted at a young age, taught art and music and dancing, and then has her virginity sold to the highest bidder. I found that to be hugely at odds with the overall tone of the piece.)

I've been giving the Companion's Guild some thought recently, as they are a key part of this year's Christmas Game ("Memoirs of a Companion"). This week's game served as a little bit of a testbed for some of those ideas, including the character of Rose, and it all seemed to go pretty well.

The other big risk associated with last night's game (and indeed with the "Christmas Game") is that it did touch on some difficult material. Rose's backstory, and the abuse therein, raised a particularly worrying flag.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this game worked out, and most especially in light of my disappointment with the previous "Lost Episode". Though I'm definitely going for a lighter tone with the next one! And I'm also reasonably happy I've got a handle on how to present my material for the "Christmas Game", which is good to know. So, a success!

My next session will be the first part of "Eberron: Dust to Dust", then I'm hoping to get a chance to actually play something for a change, and then it's "Bucking the Tiger", the last of the "Echoes of War" pre-gen episodes for the game. October is going to be a busy month!

Chaotic Good

I don't really intend to use alignment again in my games. Fortunately, 5e makes it really easy just to drop it, as the game gives alignment absolutely no mechanical weight (while also offering a different method to set up a character with some sort of code - Ideals, Flaws, and Bonds). So, unless I happen to go back to 3e, I doubt this will be anything more than a theoretical discussion again.

That said, alignment is still such a big (and divisive) part of D&D's history that discussions about what the alignments mean persist. On Wednesday we found ourselves having one such discussion, specifically about the Chaotic Good alignment, which one player characterised as a "Robin Hood"-type, and also as "you're good, but you can do whatever you want".

Well...

The first misconception there is "you can do whatever you want". While that's true, it's also true of all the alignments - it's important to note that alignment is not a straightjacket. Though, of course, if your stated alignment doesn't match your actions, your stated alignment should really be changed...

The other issue, and it's a common one, lies in the roles of Lawful and Chaotic alignments. Here, the names are rather unfortunate - this isn't about obeying the law or not. Rather, it's about the entire concept of laws (and systems, heirarchies, and all that stuff). The Lawful character believes that such structures are, in general, a beneficial thing (in the case of an LG person, because he feels they're a social good; in the case of an LE person, because he feels they're useful to him).

Conversely, the Chaotic character believes that such structures are a harmful thing and should be removed (again, in the case of a CG person, because he feels that such things actively harm others; in the case of a CE person, because they get in his way).

Consider, for example, a badly-written law - one that doesn't do what it was intended to do or one that applies unfairly. In that situation, it's entirely reasonable that the Lawful person will reject that law but, crucially, he will work to replace it with a better one. The Chaotic person, on the other hand, will work to remove the law entirely.

But it's also important to remember that the nine alignments are all, necessarily, very broad. That's inevitable, really - if you're going to categorise the entirety of human action into nine buckets, those buckets have to be pretty huge (or maybe everyone's just Neutral...).

So a 'mild' Chaotic person might seek to reduce the impact of laws (and heirarchies, and the like) on people's lives, while an extreme Chaotic person may seek to remove every instance of laws, no matter how benign. Conversely, a 'mild' Lawful person may seek to tighten the laws to improve matters, while an extreme Lawful person may seek to codify every possible situation.

Naturally, sanity lies somewhere in the middle.

(It of course didn't help that BECMI D&D only had Lawful and Chaotic alignments, and didn't codify Good and Evil. In practice, this had the effect that Lawful = Good, while Chaotic = Evil.)

Oh, and the other other thing is that we've all pretty much been doing alignments wrong ever since D&D was published. Forget everything that is written about behaviours and values, because that's dross. Alignment, as originally intended, was nothing more (or less) than a set of team shirts. By which token, Lawful Good = "America! Fuck Yeah!". Which presumably makes Chaotic Good "Oh Canada"...

Start of a New Campaign

Last night saw the start of my first full 5e campaign, "Eberron: Dust to Dust", which is expected to meet once a month for the foreseeable future. My thoughts after the first session:

A Good Group

The group consists of five players, which is a full complement, and which is the number I had hoped for. I've played with all of these players before, and there are no problem personalities amongst them, no obvious clashes that I can see, and they all have the nice habit of turning up when and where they say they will (which is distressingly rare amongst gamers). Which is all to the good.

In terms of PCs, we have a Warforged Fighter, a Dragonborn Cleric, a Forest Gnome Wizard, and two Bards - a Tiefling and a Changeling. Thankfully, Eberron is extremely cosmopolitan, so I don't see any issues with the group not including any humans or in it being a wide variety of races. So that's all to the good.

And the players all seem to have latched on to the role-playing aspects of the game rather well - whereas past groups might have seen me despairing over a lack of Traits, Bonds, etc, or finding it like pulling teeth to detail the Anchor NPCs, this group were readily able to provide that material. Good stuff.

Character Creation in 5e

Character generation went very well, despite this being a new system for almost everyone. I did feel a little sorry for one player, who turned up with a fully-detailed PC, but he didn't seem to mind. Otherwise, it was just a matter of working through the steps, which are rather less involved than even core-rules-only 3e.

I particularly like the Backgrounds for 5e, which allow for some nice detailing of the character (and also allows players to either enhance or play against their other character choices - you don't get unduly penalised for playing against type). And I also like the use of Traits, Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals, which inject role-playing aspects right into character creation (and, given the way we're handling Inspiration, should also tie into the game itself).

So I was well pleased with that.

Woefully Under-prepared

The one concern I have with this campaign is the question of how much to prepare. With "The Eberron Code", I had a clear beginning, middle, and end for the campaign before I started, and quite a few of the steps along the way. I just don't have that here.

However, with the relative failure of "Star Wars: Imperial Fist", and also the collapse of "Lost Mine of Phandelver", I don't want to put a huge amount of effort into the campaign until I know it has legs.

And so I find myself somewhat under-prepared for what's ahead. I know how the campaign starts, I have a rough idea of how it might end, and I have many of the antagonists pencilled in (including immediate, mid-term, long-term, and secondary opponents). But I don't have anything like the sort of detail that I feel makes for good mysteries... and I do love a good mystery or three.

Still, that's something I can work on over the next little while. And I'm very happy with the way things have begun, so I don't really have anything to complain about. Which is nice.

Rolling Hit Points: Some Options

For a very long time (actually, since point-buy ability scores became standard), my biggest bugbear with D&D and D&D-like systems (PF, SWSE, and similar) has been rolling hit points. The major reason for this is that for the entire 3e-era I only ever rolled a '1' for hit points. (I should note two key caveats to that: firstly, and most importantly, that was actually very few characters over very few levels; secondly, it's a streak that ran from the release date of 3e to the release date of 4e, and which has finally been broken in a 3e game.)

It can be fun playing a character with minimal hit points and trying desperately to keep him alive despite a critical weakness. But it's absolutely not fun after the first such attempt. Consequently, hit point rolls became the one and only roll one which I would cheat - if the DM absolutely insisted on random rolls and didn't institute some sort of a minimum and/or reroll (which was extremely unusual), then if the dice came up a '1' that would quickly be... massaged.

It was always interesting just how angry that made some posters on ENWorld. :)

As with ability score assignments, I went through a whole bunch of house rules for hit point generation in 3e, before finally settling on one that I liked. One of the issues I had was that the "max hp at first level" interacted strangely with the multiclass rules, so that a Rogue 1/Wizard 1 was rather better off than a Wizard 1/Rogue 1. (This applied to the skill point assignments as well, which is why that's my go-to example.) So I had a table with some correcting logic that was just really confusing and served mostly to make a teeny tiny adjustment just to fix the issue.

In the end, I settled on fixed hit point assignments based on class: classes with a Poor BAB got 3 per level, classes with Medium BAB got 5, and classes with Good BAB got 7. (Which meant that the Ranger effectively "moved up" to the same as Fighters, while Barbarians "moved down". That was a feature, not a bug.) In particular, though, the "max hp at first level" was replaced by a flat +5 bonus for all characters. So a 1st level Wizard got 8 (3+5) hit points, rather than the standard 4, while a 1st level Fighter got 12 (7+5). (Again, a feature, not a bug, as was the fact that characters thus had significantly more hit points than the average of the dice roll.)

Anyway, 5e...

The stated rule in 5e is that at each level the player gets a choice: either take the average (rounded up) for the class, or roll your hit points. Per the rules as written, there is no provision for rerolling or an imposed minimum on the roll, or anything like that - if you roll, you have to live with the consequences.

All of which is absolutely fine by me. Faced with that, I would always choose to take the average so I'd be happy. For those players who really want to roll, well, the option is there too. And over the course of a campaign it will come out more or less the same anyway (you're slightly better off taking the fixed value, but only by a tiny margin).

So I'll be going with that. I do have to note that of course I expect players to play their characters in good faith. So if you choose to roll, be it hit points or ability scores, you're expected to play the resulting character without undue complaint, without cheating, and without busily 'suiciding' the character. (But, these days, I really don't expect that to be an issue. It might have been with past groups, but not now.)

That said, I do have a couple of variants I've been bouncing around for a while, which I think it may be worth adding here...

Reroll Per Level

I forget where I first saw this one, but I'm pretty sure it's not something I came up with. But here it is:

Whenever you gain a level, reroll your entire hit dice. If the result is equal to or less than your current hit point maximum, you instead gain 1 hit point. If the result is greater than your current hit point maximum, you instead take the new total.

For example, suppose a 3rd level Fighter (no Con bonus) with 21 hit points reaches 4th level. At this point the player rolls 4d10 for hit points for the new level. If the result is 21 or less, his hit point total instead increases to 22. If, instead, he rolls 31 then his new total increases to 31.

The effect of this is to 'smooth' the hit point progression over time. If you happen to roll badly at one level, then it's much more likely that your score at the next level will be higher, and so boost your total. Conversely, if you roll particularly well at one level, it's much more likely your next level (or two) will see much smaller gains. Over the course of the campaign, characters should tend towards the average for their class, but do so fairly organically.

Reroll Per Long Rest

I'm pretty sure this one is mine, and it's also specific to 5e.

Characters start an adventure with the maximum possible hit points for their class. (So a 3rd level Fighter starts with 30 hit points, plus any Con bonuses.)

Each time they take a long rest (and they have taken at least 1hp damage), reroll the entire pool of hit dice. If this is less than or equal to their current hit points, then they remain at their current hit points but their maximum is reduced to their current level. If the result is equal to or higher than their maximum hit points, their maximum is reduced by 1, and their current hit points rises to this new maximum. If the result is between their current and maximum hit points, then their maximum is reduced to the total rolled, and their current rises to this new maximum.

For example, if our 3rd level Fighter had 30 hit points but has taken damage to reduce him to 15. He takes a long rest, and so rerolls his entire hit dice. If the result is 15 or less, then he remains at 15 hit points, but his maximum is likewise reduced to 15. If, instead, the result was 30 then his maximum would be decreased to 29, but his current hit points would increase to 29. Finally, if the result was 22 then both his maximum and current hit points would change to 22.

Obviously, when the characters take a "between adventures" rest, their maximum hp totals go back to, well, maximum. (In game, that's probably something like "take a week off".)

The effect of this is that characters will gradually become more and more beaten up as the adventure progresses - they will start with a very high maximum hit points, but this will gradually reduce as their injuries take their toll. I think it's actually quite an elegant solution to the "long rest heals everything" issue in 5e - yes it does, but it also redefines that 'everything'. It also has the consequence of discouraging injured characters from casually taking a long rest (and likely reducing their maximum total). Though it does encourage a gamist artifact where the group really should exhaust their available healing before taking that long rest (to mitigate the loss). I'm not sure that's really an issue, especially stacked against "long rest heals everything".

Having said that, it's also sufficiently complex that I'm not going to bother using it!

He's Dead Jim!

Unlike a lot of RPGs, D&D (and Pathfinder) feature characters returning from the dead fairly often. Indeed, so common is this, especially in 3e, that "the revolving door of death" became something of a joke.

Conversely, characters returning from the dead has generally been quite rare in D&D-related fiction. In the original Dragonlance trilogy, Riverwind was returned in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene. In the Drizzt saga, Wulfgar returns from the dead in a long-teased development, and Salvatore has recently reincarnated all of his old heroes for a new edition. And one of the most recent Pathfinder Tales saw a lead character dying and coming back (in what was actually quite a clever plot development, I though - a curse that lasted as long as the character lived).

As time and the editions have gone on, the effects of dying and coming back have become progressively less extreme. In 1st and 2nd Edition, death reduced your Con score by 1 point permanently (in an edition where boosts to ability scores were vanishingly rare), and there was a percentage chance you wouldn't survive. In 3e you automatically came back (unless you chose not to), but lost a level. Because of the way the XP rules worked, at least in 3.5e, you would eventually catch up, but could spend some months behind. Pathfinder changes this to apply permanent negative levels (which can be removed, so not really 'permanent', although that is costly). 4e introduces a non-permanent penalty that gradually reduces as you reach "milestones", while 5e has a non-permanent penalty that reduces through resting.

None of which I actually have a problem with - being dead (and so out of the game) for the time involved should really be punishment enough, without also permanently being behind the rest of the characters in ability. And dealing with mismatched PC levels was a major pain for the DM in 3e, PF, and 4e anyway. So better to avoid the issue, IMO.

However, from a storytelling point of view, I really don't like the notion that character death is little more than a speed-bump, easily dealt with and then forgotten. I'm very much in favour of its handling in the "Star Trek" movies, or even "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", where a character can come back but they are inevitably changed by the experience. Note, though, that 'changed' doesn't have to mean 'weakened'.

So...

Step One: Roleplay It

Just because the character is out of the action doesn't mean the player is out of the game. When a character dies, the group should discuss the next step - does the player bring in a new character, or will they seek to bring the old one back? In the latter case, the DM and the player should play out a few 'afterlife' scenes, interspersed with the action of the majority of the group. There shouldn't be many of these scenes, since it's one PC versus the rest of the group, and because you don't want them to be dead for very long (real-time) anyway, so just a few: maybe an introduction to the afterlife, some meetings with old friends/enemies/ancestors, and then the call to go back.

Step Two: The Character Rebuild

When the character returns, he doesn't have to come back as-is. Instead, the player should be given the chance to do a rebuild of the character, with almost everything up for grabs. As far as I can see, the following items should remain unchanged:

• The character's race, unless the character was reincarnated rather than raised/resurrected.
• The character's background, unless this is changed to a "post-death" background.
• The character's ability scores should remain broadly the same - a minor adjustment is fine, but not more than 1-2 points in any direction. (And if the ability scores are to be changed, he should use the point-buy system to do it.)

But pretty much everything else should be up for grabs. If the player decides the change some feat assignments, or his sub-class, or even his class, that's probably fine - the character has just gone through a life-changing trauma, so maybe his Paladin is now suddenly a Fighter (or the reverse), or he now has a different Bond or Ideal.

But there is one caveat: the player should be required to change something.

Post-death Backgrounds

5e has introduced an interesting new customisation option called the background, representing what the character did before he became an adventurer. (Actually, it was 4e that introduced the mechanic, and of course they're not exactly a new development. But 5e brought them into the D&D core for the first time.) Which is all to the good.

What the "character rebuild" step above allows for, though, is the option of introducing some new backgrounds, for characters who have died and been reborn. It's not unreasonably, after all, to assume that for some characters their "back from the dead" moment might come to mean more to them than their long-ago background as a rat catcher or whatever.

I propose, therefore, the introduction of at least one new background for characters who have died and returned. (I'm not sure if it's better to have one background with a choice of features, or several backgrounds each with a single feature.) This would reflect the character's post-life experience, and his reaction to coming back: maybe he's now world-weary and wants to die again, maybe he was compelled to return by unfinished business, maybe he's horrified by what lies in store and will now refuse to die (again), maybe he realises now that life is sweet, or whatever.

Problem is, now I need to write up this background, which may then never be used...

Ties that Bind: The Anchor NPC

For my upcoming Eberron campaign, I've asked each of the players to detail an "anchor NPC". This is a non-player character who has some in-built connection to the relevant PC, and who has some reason to attend the same party as the PC at the start of the campaign.

(It should be noted that "some in-built connection" is deliberately vague, as is "some reason to attend". The NPC could be a friend, relative or lover of the PC, or s/he could equally be an enemy, a rival, a bitter ex, or whatever else. And the NPC could be there for a reason directly connected to the PC or indeed for an entirely unrelated reason - which could be as simple as "I had an invitation".)

The reason for wanting this anchor NPC on the scene is that something bad (TM) is going to happen at the party which will trigger the first adventure in the campaign, and while that event will proper the PCs to direct action, it will be more interesting if they care for some NPCs so that the story isn't just "how to we get out of this" and turns into "how do we rescue (or not) these other guys as well?"

It will, of course, be my intent to use some or all of these anchor NPCs later in the campaign, in various capacities - some will be allies, some may be enemies. Of course, some may not survive the first adventure!

My goals for this first adventure, then, are two-fold:

1. Meld the individual PCs into a somewhat-coherent group. This shouldn't be a big issue, since the players will hopefully do that well enough.
2. Prepare the anchor NPCs for world-building use.

And it's worth noting that one of my players has suggested an angle that is very interesting, and something I most likely would never have considered on my own. Which is extremely cool, and one of the great advantages of the tabletop RPG form. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this campaign.

Campaign Links

One of the things I try to do when running games set in the same universe is to try to keep them consistent and have them occasionally interact with one another. This actually started way back when I was running a lot of Vampire games, where occasional characters introduced in a "Dark Ages" game might pop up in a modern-era "Masquerade" game.

More recently, I had intended to introduce a prophecy near the end of my "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" campaign and then just leave it hanging - only to finally deal with the resolution in a future Legacy-era campaign. But when "Imperial Fist" didn't quite work out, I dropped both the planned prophecy and the planned future campaign. A shame, but perhaps for the best.

The benefit of doing this is that it serves as something of an Easter egg for players who happened to play in both games. The connections won't actually matter, but they're a nice touch. This is especially useful if the end of the previous campaign changed the world in some way - in most cases, the game then ends, which means the player never actually sees the result of their victory. But by connecting the next campaign, they do. (The downside, of course, is that it's harder work than just resetting everything.)

As it happens, I now find myself building two sets of links simultaneously - once for the "Firefly: Lost Episodes" game and once for "Eberron: Dust to Dust".

The Eberron campaign links back to two previous campaigns. From the "On Tracks of Lightning" game we have the re-establishment of the lightning rail across the Mournland and the defeat of the Lord of Blades. From "The Eberron Code" we have the journey of the Cerulean Swan to the north and, later, the cleansing of the Silver Flame. (Awkwardly, the chronology of "Dust to Dust" starts somewhere near the end of Act Two of "The Eberron Code". I'm planning to move the timeline forward rather briskly though!)

For Firefly, the link mostly comes in the form of a character I'm about to introduce in a Lost Episode who I intend also to use in a flashback in the Christmas Game. But more on that when the time comes...

How Many Firefly Lost Episodes?

I've been rather enjoying my "Firefly: The Lost Episodes" games. In particular, the use of the 'known' characters allows people to slot in very quickly to their roles. However, this week it occurred to me that MWP (publishers of the game) have now produced more pre-gen episodes for the game than there actually were episodes of the show. When we add to that possible conversions of the old Serenity adventures, and any Episodes that I generate myself (of which I hope there will be many), that very quickly starts to add up.

And so I found myself wondering how many Lost Episodes there could reasonably be, before we have to start moving beyond the film?

Firefly aired its single season in 2002. There were fourteen episodes, one of which was the double-length pilot episode. If we extrapolate that to a full 2002/03 season, then, we get a further seven episodes.

We can then add a full season for 2003/04, giving another 22 episodes, and then most of a 2004/05 season. This last gives 19 episodes, as the film is essentially a triple-length episode. So, a total of 48 Lost Episodes, of which I've run six. That's enough for about three and a half years of gaming, which is probably plenty!

There's a certain story oddity to that, since the film is in many ways a conclusion to the first season of the show rather than the third, resolving as it does the issues surrounding the Reavers, and Simon and River being on the run. It also fits best if it occurs just a few months after Inara leaves, which should be rights be shortly after the last episode of the show. Indeed, in a perfect world I'd just jump beyond the film and start there. The problem with that can be summed up in one word: Wash.

Another possibility is to run another year or so of Lost Episodes, handling Inara and Book leaving at some point, and then bringing that series to an end. And then advancing the timeline to catch up with my Christmas Games to start "Firefly: Phase II".

Or a third option would be to simply ignore the film entirely, and just run indefinitely. Book never leaves, Wash never dies, and all is shiny.

Or something. I'm probably over-thinking things, since who knows what my thinking might be in three years time?

Princes of the Apocalypse

After "Tyranny of Dragons", I was a little hesitant about WotC's next storyline product. And some of the hype surrounding this adventure was also off-putting - I try not to buy into the hype because that too often leads to disappointment. That was probably a wise choice. This isn't an instant classic, and it certainly isn't 5e's killer app, or anything of that sort.

But it is a very good adventure.

This is a 256-page hardback book divided into 7 chapters and 3 appendices.

Chapters 1 and 2 present background information for the adventure. Chapter 1 gives details of the various factions in play and also the four elemental cults. This is all fairly interesting stuff, and useful for running the adventure. Chapter 2 then provides something of a gazeteer of the region in which the adventure takes place, including some adventure hooks that a DM may wish to pursue later. This is all fine.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 then present the meat of the adventure itself - chapter 3 the overland investigations into the cults, chapter 4 the upper levels of their domains, and then chapter 5 the lower levels and the climax. This is all good stuff and well presented (though I personally would prefer the stat-blocks to be embedded in the text).

My one concern here, and it applies to the adventure as a whole, is that this is actually pretty short. The meat of the adventure accounts for less than half of the book, and the book itself already seemed pretty short for a full-blown campaign. So it's good stuff... there just doesn't seem enough of it.

Chapter 6 then provides some supporting adventure material: two optional 'intro' adventures, and eight sidequests.

The main "Princes..." adventure is intended to run from levels 3-15. The two intro adventures are therefore provided as a means to advance 1st level PCs to a point where they're ready for the main plot. They are, consequently, not an essential part of the story. Nonetheless, I really liked these, and would recommend they be used.

Sadly, I was less enamoured with the sidequests, only two of which really interested me. A shame, but at least they're non-essential material.

Chapter 7 and the Appendices then provide additional support material for the adventure. Chapter 7 is monsters and magic items, both of which were solid. (I'm a fan of the way 5e presents monsters generally.) Appendix A details Genasi as a new PC race, while Appendix B gives new spells. All good stuff.

Appendix C then provides some guidance on how to port the adventure to other worlds: Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Eberron; and then some suggestions for porting to a homebrew world. In particular, it provides specific advice about how the adventure might alter to fit the flavour of different worlds, and also how the various factions might be replaced if the setting doesn't include a direct analogue. I have to applaud, therefore, not just the inclusion of guidelines, but also the way the guidelines were presented. Good stuff.

One final note: after all of this, there's an Afterword followed by a few pages of concept art, some of it for items that were considered and rejected as not quite fitting. I felt this was a really good use of a few pages, and hope it is repeated in future storyline products.

So, how does that leave "Princes of the Apocalyse" overall? Well, I remain somewhat disappointed that the 'main' adventure is so short. It really doesn't feel enough for a full-blown campaign. And yet, it does feel like a complete adventure.

In terms of quality, it fares rather better. It's true that it's not an instant classic, and it's probably not up there with, say "Lost Mine of Phandelver" or "Rise of the Runelords". Indeed, I didn't think it was quite as good as "Giantslayer", the other adventure I've reviewed recently. However, it is better than both "Tyranny of Dragons" (as a whole, or either part alone), and it's better than "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil". It's a good adventure, and I can recommend it, especially for a DM willing to beef up the sidequests for his own use.

Firefly: Strawberries

Ouch. That didn't go so well.

The game was set up for five players, but could also work with four. I was rather concerned for much of Tuesday that we'd end up with three, but I needn't have been worried - not only did all four of the expected players attend but one of the "Maybes" was present as well, giving us a full complement.

Unfortunately, the problems with the game session were of my own making.

I had thought the premise of the game was quite clever: Mal, Zoe, and Jayne were busy meeting with Badger, and Inara was likewise otherwise engaged. The rest of the Crew then discovered an imminent threat which they would have to deal with themselves. The absence of the captain and first mate meant that there was no obvious chain of command (and meant that the burden of solving the problem wouldn't fall on just one player), and the absence of the three 'fighters' meant turning and fighting was a poor option. Plus, Simon's pressing need to be elsewhere was directly at odds with Wash's need to stay put, which should generate some interest.

The way I thought it would play out was as follows:

• Prelude: River wakes up screaming after a dream-premonition indicating there was serious trouble coming. Meanwhile, Book notices that one of Badger's men in taking an unhealthy interest in the ship.
• Act One: Simon and River retreat back to the ship. Along the way they find themselves being pursued by a bounty hunter, and have a run-in with local law enforcement. However, the alert on River's head is unexpectedly cancelled, so they're free to go.
• Act Two (actually run concurrently with Act One): Wash, Book, and Kaylee confront Badger's goon and extract information from him. Sure enough, Badger has betrayed them, having realised who River was after she insulted him (in "Shindig"). He therefore made some calls to bounty hunters, the law, etc. The goon had actually been ordered to stay away, but the money was just too good.
• Act Three: The Crew spend some time working out a plan on Serenity.
• Act Four: The Crew carry out their plan.

Now, I had been slightly concerned about Acts Three and Four, because I had no idea what plan the party might come up with. I was prepared to let just about any scheme, no matter how half-baked, go ahead, and was broadly ready whether they tried to Fight, Flee, Negotiate, or Trick their way out of it. (Obviously, "Fight" was a poor option, but they might try it.)

The other slight concern I had was that Simon and River might not head back to the ship, leaving me with a split party for the duration of the game. Though I figured that was unlikely, and so I had some contingency in place for that case.

But what I singularly failed to prepare for was for the Crew to take no action at all. Having identified that Badger's goon was watching the ship, the three PCs who were there decided to lock the place up tight and otherwise ignore the guy. Having calmed River down enough to be somewhat communicative, Simon proceeded to go back to his consultation with the friendly NPC doctor. (Unfortunately, I'd even prepared for that - had either half of the group made contact with the other, they'd have accessed the Cortex and become aware of the alert on River's presence, thus spurring action.)

And so the adventure came to a horrible screeching halt. Disaster!

(And I'm kicking myself about another thing, too. I gave the player who was running River a bag-of-thoughts representing her impressions from the dream. Some of these were nonsense, some were references back to the show (such as Book's hair and his many secrets; or "Mal" meaning "bad"), and some were plot points for the episode. And one, in particular, said simply "RUN!!" I should have realised that red herrings are a bad idea - the player latched on to the nonsense and completely missed the plot points.)

From there, it was a salvage job. Eventually, Simon and River decided to return to the ship, but by then the bounty hunter was right on top of them. And naturally, being PCs, they elected to stand and fight rather than just run like hell. (Another mistake on my part - I shouldn't have had the bad guys continue to close in while the PCs wasted time. I should have stuck with the original Act One.)

Anyway, at length they got back to the ship. The bounty hunter was arrested by local law enforcement and thus taken out of play. I was even able to drop in the oddity about the alert being cancelled, and made it clear that that's a sure sign that the Alliance is up to black ops. And I even gave River a "worse is coming" Complication to hammer home the situation.

So, okay, things should be back on track at that point. There's bad stuff afoot, and it's down to these five characters to deal with it. What will they do?

Cue my biggest, most epic screw-up of the scenario. Faced with this situation, the five PCs decided that what they really really needed to do was get in touch with Mal, Zoe, and Jayne. Clearly, the point of this Episode was a rescue mission - the captain was unavailable because the five PCs were expected to rescue him. But they had absolutely no idea how to even start with that, because I hadn't laid out any options (having not even considered that they might try).

After this, there was a pretty quick conclusion. The Episode just hadn't worked, so as well to bring it to a close as painlessly as possible. And then never, ever, do something so half-baked again.

It's hard to come up with any real lessons to be learned from this session. I screwed it up really, really badly. I didn't present the opening scene with enough tension, I didn't force things to keep moving, and I somehow managed to present the wrong story. It was just a mess.

The bottom line is just: don't do that again.

Room by Room

I'm in the process of reading "Princes of the Apocalypse", and there's something that's bugging me about this adventure. Though I should be clear: this adventure is far from the only offender; indeed, it's much rarer to find a published adventure that doesn't fall into this particular trap.

There's a 10-page section in the adventure where the PCs are interacting with a monastery populated by evil monks. So far, so simple.

So this adventure does what every other adventure does: it provides a keyed map and then details the monastery room by room, carefully detailing the contents of every room, and placing the monks in the appropriate locations, and that's that.

And it's incredibly dull. Reading through it, I was left with the overwhelming impression: surely there must be a better way to present this information?

The thing is, there's a whole lot of detail that we just don't need and that is, frankly, fairly uninteresting. Worse, the adventure text locks down a lot of detail that shouldn't be locked down - in a 'living' building, characters will naturally move from room to room.

So I found myself thinking that they'd have been better instead presenting the half-page map of the monastery on one page (and the lower level on a second), with bullet points indicating the salient features of the level right there next to the map. If need be, they could then have a couple of pages of key encounter areas, but let's not bother with a paragraph of text detailing the content of a storage room, please!

That description out of the way, they could then better use the rest of the text discussing how the life of the monastery goes on: where are the monks in a 'normal' day? How does that change if/when they come under attack? What about at night? And so on and so forth. Indeed, they could usefully provide a list of the total population of the monastery and a few random tables allowing the DM to generate the actual populace of a given room - perhaps the training hall has 8 monks in it this time (training), or perhaps they're all in the mess hall (dinner).

It seems to me that that's the better way to detail any mid-sized building, and especially a 'living' building such as a manor house, tavern, monastery, or office. People move around a lot, and tend not to be happily waiting for the PCs to kick in the door and kill them!

Plus, that should allow the book more room to detail some of the personalities present, and how they interact. Perhaps the sensei is a brutal martinet and widely disliked; perhaps Bob the monk is formenting discord, while Al and Clive are the sensei's loyal bullies. Or something. Give the PCs some levers they can pull so that they can influence the running of the place, rather than just detailing the leader and the lieutenant in isolation with no indication as to how their particular quirks influence the rest of the monks.

Of course, I may be completely wrong. Maybe the room-by-room description of the environment really is the optimum way to present the information. But, somehow, I doubt it.

Death of the FLGS

Some twenty-seven years ago (minus a few weeks), I first ventured into a speciality RPG store to buy my shiny new "Red Box" D&D Basic Set. Said purchase has a lot to answer for, but that's another rant.

Over the years, I would return to that store, "The Dragon and George" many times. It was... quirky to say the least. The opening hours were always erratic, the availability of some products was doubtful, and it never did get around to taking card payments (a somewhat disastrous lack, to be honest). Plus, it was battered hard by the rise of Games Workshop (which killed the market for non-GW miniatures), was battered harder by the rise of internet shopping (where Amazon can sell you a PHB for less than the FLGS can stock it), and was done no favours at all when a competing FLGS with much better stock opened just along the road.

So the writing was on the wall. And, indeed, I had myself almost completely stopped going there: when 4e turned out not to be for me (and yet I had no interest in getting on the Pathfinder treadmill), and when SWSE was cancelled, I found I had no reason to go - I simply was not ever going to buy anything. 5e might have changed that, but WotC's decision to maintain a much smaller release schedule for the game removed that hope.

And yet it was something of a shock when I walked past the store on Saturday to find that "The Dragon and George" is closed, permanently this time. The store-front has been repainted, it's up "To Let", and the stock is gone. The only indication that there was ever anything there is the tiny card showing the theoretical opening hours.

The major consequence of this is that I'll now be buying my RPGs online. The FLGS had been an exception to my policy of not bothering visiting real shops, since the internet has killed them and taken their stuff. But with "The Dragon and George" gone, that exception is no longer valid. (It would be different if there was an FLGS in Falkirk, in which case I might feel inclined to support it. However, there isn't, and you'd basically have to be mad to start one. So no worries there.)

Otherwise, though, it's the end of an era. All that remains is to thank "The Dragon & George" for starting me on this path, and to raise a (metaphorical) glass in honour.

How I'd Do a D&D Movie

So there's been a settlement, and everyone gets to move forward with a new D&D movie. Apparently, Warner Brothers are going to make it, using the "Chainmail" script written by the guy who did "Wrath of the Titans", but retrofitted to take place in the Forgotten Realms. And Courtney Solomon is going to produce it. Virtually none of that fills me with any confidence.

Which raises the question: how would I do a D&D movie? (Well, actually, I'm not sure it does. But I'm going to write about that anyway.)

Well, the very first thing I would do is throw out any notion of making a "good" movie, not because I don't want it to be good, but because that's a useless goal since it doesn't actually mean anything. "The Dark Knight" is a good film, "Pulp Fiction" is a good film, but these are very different films.

What I'd be shooting for is an unabashedly entertaining film, something like the last three "Fast & Furious" films. I won't claim that any of those are "good" films, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, and especially "Fast 5". And, crucially, they now seem to have settled into a formula that just works. And there's a lot to be said for that.

(Those last three films have also been absurdly successful, which is a massive plus. A successful D&D film opens the doors for more films in the series, while a "good" film that flops does not. And while a sucky-but-successful film is of no use to me, a series of films that are at least entertaining is.)

There's another key reason why I'm looking to the recent "Fast & Furious" films for my model going forward: Vin Diesel. As we know, he is famously a fan of D&D, and he's also been known to take on projects as a labour of love (the third "Riddick" film, for instance).

So, my next step (after ditching the "good" goal) would be to approach Vin Diesel and (hopefully) the Rock, and indeed as much of the team behind those three F&F films, and see if they can't be persuaded to take it on - with a fairly simple remit: do all that stuff you do, but do it for D&D rather than F&F.

'Cos let's face it - I actually know sod all about making a film. And so, like Augustus Caesar but unlike Courtney Solomon, the biggest part of my plan would be to assemble a team of people who do know what they're doing, and then trust them.

As for the story, I think my premise would run something like this:

The Rock is the leader of a team of dungeon-crawling adventurers (the classic four-member group), who are of course less-than-entirely law abiding. VD is the badass bounty hunter sent to bring them in. (This effectively reverses their roles in F&F.)

Anyway, the film opens with TR and his team digging through some dungeon, with the very first shot probably being the classic image from the PHB cover of them digging the gem-eyes out of a dungeon statue.

There then proceed several scenes of TR leading VD a merry chase through various adventures, until we get the initial confrontation. This goes badly, with at least one of the adventurers (and probably one of VD's team also) dead on the ground. Worse, in the process of this confrontation the two forces set off some disaster (be it awakening the Tarrasque to wipe out the nearby town, or causes the dungeon to start to collapse, or something), thus forcing them to work together for the remainder of the film, the final confrontation with the BBEG (or whatever).

And the film therefore ends with VD giving TR and his team 24-hours head-start. Cue the end credits, and the stinger showing them all gathered at the table with dice and books.

Something like that, anyway.

One thing I'm pretty certain of is that I'd be avoiding the classic story of The Special hero Saving the World from the Nameless Dark Lord. That film has been made once or twice. (Of course, I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what we'll be getting, probably including the obligatory Plucky Comic Relief, the Love Interest, the Quest for the McGuffin, and the Potentious Voiceover at the start. Which I'm sure will be both cool and awesome. Like 4e.)