D&D in a Post-Game of Thrones world

One of the things discussed in the development of 5e is that we're now in a world where most people's primary fantasy touchstone is no longer "Lord of the Rings", but rather "Game of Thrones". This means that the expectations people will bring to the game table are likely quite different, and also means that what people are looking for from the game are also probably different.

While D&D is not "Game of Thrones", any more than it ever was "Lord of the Rings", I do wonder to what extent that should perhaps influence the game?

Humans Only: It's an interesting fact that Gygax actually wasn't a huge fan of "Lord of the Rings". He actually preferred the stories of Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric, and the works of Lovecraft. In fact, I suspect he would have omitted the 'demihuman' races (as they were then known) entirely, except that the player base expected to see them.

However, in the post-GoT world, I wonder if it isn't time to significantly re-evaluate whether the non-human races should be de-emphasised, or even eliminated? I have two reasons for this. One of these is that GoT probably has deeper characterisation than has been the norm in fantasy stories. Meanwhile, in D&D it is sadly not uncommon for players to use their character's race as a substitute for character - they're playing "the elf", and that's enough.

The second reason for this is that an awful lot of the character work in GoT deals with several inter-related houses of nobles in the setting: the Starks, Lannisters, Greyjoys, Boltons, etc - and note that the inter-related nature of those houses is often fairly crucial to the plot. But where the 'houses' are replaced with different species you lose those inter-relations. Which means the setting then either needs to duplicate the setup several times for each species in turn, or it loses a key chunk of the campaign.

Low Fantasy: A long time ago, some bright spark drew a distinction between 'high' fantasy such as the King Arthur myth, Lord of the Rings, and the like; and 'low' fantasy like the Lankhmar stories, the Black Company stories, and Game of Thrones - settings that, while distinctly fantasy, tend to deal with human-scale issues. While magic, and even quite powerful magic, does exist in GoT, it does tend to be fairly rare and fairly subtle.

D&D has always had a somewhat tricky relationship with those two influences - the level structure tends to mean that characters deal with low fantasy issues at low levels but then 'graduate' to high fantasy at higher level (with the switch-over point moving down with each successive edition - in 1st Ed it was around level 10; in 5e it's closer to level 5).

(But, on the other hand, while D&D is now in the post-GoT world, it's also in the post-Harry Potter world, so maybe this is a case where the game should embrace that side of the equation?)

Mature Themes: Tricky one this - in D&D, "mature themes" has only really appeared in a couple of official products (3e's "Book of Vile Darkness" and "Book of Exalted Deeds"), where it more or less boiled down to "boobs and blood". "Game of Thrones", of course, isn't exactly short of boobs and blood. On the other hand, though, there's rather more to it than that - there's all manner of shades of grey, deals and betrayals, and characters who go from heroic to deeply flawed to back again.

So what does all that mean?

I'm actually inclined to wonder whether WotC would be well-served to bring back the short-lived "Birthright" setting. Though if they were inclined to do so, I'd suggest that they don't simply reprint and/or update the setting, but instead re-imagine the setting in light of the post-GoT world. And, in particular, they might be well-served adopting both the human-centric and mature themes elements - I do think there's potential for them to do extremely well if that were done.

In terms of my own table, though, it doesn't mean too much will change... for now. I am pondering the possibilities of homebrewing an entirely new setting, as I'm no longer convinced 5e does Eberron terribly well and I'm not a fan of FR, in which case I'll probably adopt some of my thoughts here. But it's really early days at this stage.

Lessons from "Dust to Dust" (and "Imperial Fist")

The Eberron "Dust to Dust" campaign ended in a TPK on Tuesday. That's somewhat unfortunate, in that it's never the preferred way to end a campaign (and I had an actual plan for bringing it to a real end for perhaps the first time), but on the other hand it came at a convenient time. So that's fine.

The biggest lesson I've 'learned' from this campaign is actually something I've 'known' for some time but managed to ignore. And it's the same lesson I should have learned from the "Imperial Fist" campaign, which suffered from many of the same frustrations.

And it is this: to have a successful campaign you (well, I) have to do significant underlying preparation work.

That preparation work doesn't guarantee success, of course - it's entirely possible to do loads of prep work and still have it go wrong for any number of reasons. But it does seem that not doing that preparation work does guarantee... not failure, as such, but more a less-than-satisfactory result.

And it's notable the difference between the quality of the prep work I did for "The Eberron Code" versus the work I did for either "Dust to Dust" or "Imperial Fist", and also the quality of the end result in all of these cases.

I think that's the biggest and best lesson from that campaign. In "Dust to Dust" I had a fairly solid (but, alas, underbaked) image for the start of the campaign, I had vague notions for four acts for the campaign story, and I thought I had some neat stuff in terms of factions and anchor NPCs. As it turned out, though, none of those things really came to anything - once we were underway, I just didn't have the time to properly flesh out any of the material, which meant most of it quickly fell by the wayside. A real shame.

So, what's next? Well, nothing. There remains the possibility of this year's "Christmas Game", but I'm not going to give that much, if any, attention until at least after we move out of the flat (and probably not until after we move in to the new place). That means it will probably be cancelled this year, as I just have other things to do. In terms of campaign play, I don't have anything in the hopper. And it will be the middle of next year, at the very least, before I even consider starting something off again.

Proposed House Rule: Stun-lock

One of the best innovations introduced in 3.5e was a change to the hold person spell whereby the victim gained a save to throw off the spell every round. This was a small change, and applied only to that one spell, but it made a huge difference to the way it worked and brought it back into balance (more or less).

This idea was then adopted much more thoroughly in 4e, and now 5e, where lots of conditions operate on a "save ends" basis. Indeed, in many cases, these effects no longer have a stated duration at all, but last until the victim makes a successful save.

But there was an unfortunate consequence of this, which was that some 4e players responded to the change by seeking out every means possible to boost the save DC of their powers. And this gave rise to the practice of "stun-locking" - hit a target with an effect that stunned it until the save ended the effect, but boost the save DC to a point where the creature needed a nat-20 for the save (which meant that almost no creature ever made the save).

My proposal for the house rule here is quite simple: for every failed save, the target gains a cumulative +1 bonus on the next save.

This means that the save becomes progressively easier as time goes on, and it means that the effect eventually will end. And it means that even a creature (or PC) targetted on a weak save can only be taken out of the game for a limited time.

(That said, I think I actually favour an alternate form of this, especially for effects with no fixed duration but instead a simple "save ends" - which is simply a "three strikes" variant, whereby the target is allowed to suffer the effects of a failed save three times, but is considered to automatically make the fourth save.)

Where I Stand on 5e Now

Having now run most of a campaign under 5e, I think it's a good time to take stock of where I stand on the issue now. Because some of my views now don't match up with my initial impressions, and it's worth considering how things have actually panned out compared with what I expected.

The bottom line is that I'm not overly impressed with 5e. It's okay, and there's a lot that is good about it, but... every time I think of some positive aspect of the game I'm immediately provoked to think, "but...". I don't think there are any unalloyed good aspects of the game, and that's a real shame.

Probably the most damning aspect of the game is the sheer physical quality of the books, or lack thereof - every single one of my 5e books has had a visibly weakened spine before I've even finished a single read-through. Indeed, every one of my 5e books is in noticably worse condition than my 1st Edition "Unearthed Arcana", and that book was notorious for its binding issues - and many of my 5e books have had no at-table use at all. (I find this extremely poor, and especially since 5e saw above-inflation price rises compared to previous editions. I don't begrudge paying the money; I object very strongly to paying more for a less-good product.)

I'm also not terribly impressed with the adventures, which is rather a weakness when those are the core focus of the edition. In fairness, I thought "Lost Mine of Phandelver" was brilliant, as was the first half of "Out of the Abyss". But "Princes of the Apocalypse" and "Curse of Strahd" were only okay, while "Tyranny of Dragons", "Storm King's Thunder", and the second half of "Out of the Abyss" were poor.

I do think that the core game is decent, but it's also very limited. 5e does what it does well, but it's really good for the vanilla D&D experience and that's about it - everything that's unique about Eberron (or, I would presume Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or other "out there" settings") either doesn't exist or falls flat. Which means that a campaign that is anything other than 'normal' D&D, or a repaint of the same, is likely to fall flat.

Certainly, it is not my intention to run another Eberron campaign in 5e unless and until WotC formally support the setting. And I have no expectation that they will do that any time soon (and there's no guarantee that I'll like their 'support', of course). Indeed, if I run the game again, it will be casual games only - either games for less experienced players, or an open tabletop, or something like that. For any more 'serious' play, I'd be inclined to revert to 3e... or just not bother at all.

Additionally, the game is frequently quite poorly presented in places - although the rules for monster building are reasonably decent, they're also poorly explained. A good rewrite, without the need for any real changes, would make these significantly better. Likewise, the guidelines for creating encounters are poor - a huge step back from 4e's fairly robust system.

Tying into that, and despite my initial enthusiasm for the "Monster Manual", I've found that a lot of the 5e monsters are not terribly well designed. Part of this is the return of monsters with 'spellcasting' being presented with a long list of usable spells - something 4e very wisely did away with. But that could be fixed simply by better presentation; harder to fix is that the monsters just don't seem to be very good in the first place - too many seem to oscillate wildly between walkovers or overly deadly, which is possibly the worst of all worlds.

Ultimately, my conclusion is that 5e is better, but more limited than 4e - while 4e very much wasn't for me, I find myself really wanting to like 5e, but constantly stymied by its weaknesses.

(Which means my rating for the editions runs something like: 3.5e, 3e, BECMI, 2nd Ed, 5e, 4e. But that's maybe a little harsh - 5e is better designed than either BECMI or 2nd; it just doesn't 'grab' me in quite the same way.)

Right now, I don't foresee running any more campaigns in 5e. As noted, I'll probably use it for some more casual games, be they for less experienced players or open tabletop games. But I'm hard-pressed to see what they could do, practically speaking, to make me really happy with the edition, especially since some of what I'd like to see would essentially require a "5.5 edition" that I don't think anyone really wants to see.

Storm King's Thunder

I had high hopes for "Storm King's Thunder", which promised a lot with its "Shakespearean Giants" premise - the writers had basically combined the plot of "King Lear" with a Storm Giant's court, which could be interesting.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Had WotC described this book as a "North Faerun" setting book with associated adventure material, it would probably have done very well. The centre-piece of this book is a large chapter giving a very brief but surprisingly good overview of a significant region. Good stuff. Of course, if WotC had described this as a setting book, I also wouldn't have bought it, it being "not for me". Unfortunately, they described it as an adventure... and as an adventure it is poor.

The other problem I have with the description of this adventure is that it is advertised as a storyline for PCs of levels 1-10. However, the real adventure is actually for characters of levels 5-10, with the first full chapter providing some material to advance characters from 1st to 5th. But that section then manages to fall flat - not only does it not contain anywhere near enough adventure to justify all those levels, but it also doesn't give enough space to let that material breathe. Bluntly, WotC should have dropped that first section, started the storyline at 5th level, and used the freed up space to bulk up the rest of the material.

As for the 'real' adventure itself...

I should start by noting some positives: the concept of this adventure is very solid, with lots of characters, factions, and intrigues throughout. And there's a lot of material that's worth salvaging - the three villages, the five quests "against the giants", some of the Storm King's court, and of course the gazeteer in chapter three. Indeed, this book provides a huge array of ingredients that a good DM should be able to assemble into a truly great campaign.

But there are two big problems with that:

• That "good DM" should equally be able to come up with his own 'ingredients' pretty trivially. There's very little here that is particularly new or exciting, or put together in a particularly innovative way.
• Even that "good DM" would probably be better served by starting with a better adventure to disassemble and construct.

But probably my biggest disappointment in the campaign is this: throughout, there are large numbers of factions and characters described with their own secrets and agendas. There's plenty of scope for the PCs to work with various NPCs, or reveal various secrets, and thus to talk their way through the campaign rather than just kill everything. Indeed, the premise practically promises that. Except that it never really delivers - with only a few exceptions, there isn't really any way for the PCs to find out those secrets and agendas, and thus reveal the intrigues and betrayals.

Nowhere is this most obvious than in the chapter detailing the Storm King's court, where there's a lot to discover, and where the PCs are ideally placed to find things out - being "puny folk", they could easily go unnoticed and so hear conversations between the various plotters that would allow them to discover the evil plots that are afoot. But, as written, there is no opportunity to do that, because that chapter spends most of its pages on a detailed room-by-room description of the area (which is simultaneously too small to host a real court and also too sparsely populated - where are the servants?), with the various NPCs in fixed locations waiting for the PCs to bring them on-stage. The whole thing really needed more pages, and it also needed to be a much more dynamic environment - describe scenes rather than rooms.

I'm also rather dismayed about the end of the adventure, where once again WotC have pitted the PCs against a foe who is way too powerful for their level, meaning they have to be backed up by powerful NPCs who both serve to detract from the PCs' spotlight and also make the final encounter harder to run. If WotC want to use these top-tier BBEGs (and I applaud that) then they should also pitch the adventures to higher levels so the bad guys fit.

(Also, in a campaign strongly themed on giants, shouldn't the climactic encounter have been against a giant or giants?)

Ultimately, I found this book very disappointing. As I said, there's a lot here that's salvagable, and as a setting guide to the region it's pretty decent. But as an adventure, I'm afraid I can't recommend this storyline - it's the weakest of the 5e campaigns except "Tyranny of Dragons" (but without the excuse that that was developed in parallel with 5e itself), and it's weaker than Paizo's comparable "Giantslayer" path. A shame - I had such high hopes.