Games of 2017... and 2018, too

Last night was my last RPG session of 2017. It's not exactly been a banner year for gaming, it's fair to say. Anyway, some short thoughts on the games of 2017.

Star Trek RPG: This was fun - a nice, lightweight system, and a setting that is almost ideal for one-shot games. I suspect it would need a slightly deft hand to run, since on the one hand it needs to be "Trek enough" to pass muster while at the same time too much reliance on the lore will make the game unplayable for casual fans (including myself). Still, I'd happily play this again.

Pathfinder: Somehow, 2017 was the first time I actually played Pathfinder. And I'm afraid I'm not impressed - the system started off hugely complex, and as far as I can tell has become a bit of a nightmare since then. I'll be dropping out of the Pathfinder campaign after the next session, for reasons completely unrelated to gaming, and I'm not inclined to try Pathfinder again. (I'm also likewise disinclined to buy into Starfinder at all - although the word is that it is a streamlined system, I suspect that that's only true now, because they haven't yet had chance to flesh it out yet.)

As for 2018, I expect that to be another year of very little gaming. That said, I am hoping to get at least some gaming in. And my expectation is that the next year will feature at least some association with the following games:

D&D 5e: Because D&D is never all that far from my thinking, at least as far as RPGs are concerned, and since I've now surrendered to the notion that 5e is basically 'it' as far as D&D is concerned, at least for now, I expect to give at least some thought to that edition. Plus, there's at least one book I'm planning to buy, so that's that.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: I purchased the rules for this some time back, and will at the very least give them a read at some point over the year. I'm not sure whether I'll go so far as to actually play the game, but we'll see.

Star Wars d6: I'm still minded to find an opportunity to run this game. However, perhaps more of note is the upcoming 30th Anniversary reissue of the first edition of this game, which I'm looking forward to a great deal. Indeed, this is probably my most anticipated game of 2018. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a damning indictment of current game design.

And that's my end-of-year post for The Imaginarium in 2017. See you on the flip side!

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Before I begin: Due to a cock up by Amazon, it looks like my copy of this book may have been free. I'm going to try not to let that influence my review, except for one comment in my conclusion below. Still, I felt I should provide the disclaimed right up front.

Anyway, onward...

If this book had come out 3-6 months after the 5e core rulebooks had been released, and had it been priced at $35, I would have given this book a solid 5 star review. As it is, however, this book is too little, too late, and way too expensive.

It's not that I consider the $50 price point excessive... provided they give good value for money for that. And the 256-page storyline books have mostly done that. Even "Volo's Guide", at 224 pages, was just about okay provided you got a decent discount from Amazon or similar (which sucks for the independent retailer, of course, but that's another rant).

But "Xanathar's Guide" costs the same $50, and further cuts the page count, down to 192 pages. To justify that, the contents have to be absolutely stellar - of a quality that hasn't been seen in RPG books since... I don't know - maybe since the very first edition of "Vampire: the Masquerade" changed the entire landscape?

The contents of "Xanathar's Guide" are... okay, I guess.

The book is broken down into three chapters and two appendices. The first chapter consists of character options, and is mostly made up of new subclasses for each of the twelve classes in the PHB. No new classes are presented here. The new subclasses are fine, with no stinkers that I could see. I was particularly impressed with the decision to make the Hexblade a Warlock subclass - I thought that was an inspired choice. Conversely, my reaction to the much-hyped Forge Cleric was "meh". I had read comments that suggested that this might patch the hole left by the Artificer, but frankly I didn't think it was anything more than 'okay'.

This chapter also has some additional feats, each tied to one of the races in the PHB. Those are okay. And there were some other bits an pieces about fleshing out a character's background, personality, or other details, which were fine.

The second chapter is filled with DM tools, which again range from the space-filling (we really need half a column on Cook's tools?) to the meh (knot tying!), to the really quite good actually (lots of random encounter tables, a new system on building encounters, and quite a lot of new ways to use downtime - including rules for both buying and crafting magic items). I also enjoyed the discussion on traps, except that I think they probably missed a trick here - the book notes that a simple trap mirrors a spell while complex trap mirrors a monster, while failing to note that that's probably exactly how these things should be presented (and we probably need a "Big Book of Traps" for exactly that reason).

The third, and shortest, chapter has some new spells. These are fine - I didn't feel any need for more spells, but there's no harm in them.

The first appendix is probably the single most useful part of the book, at least for my own, personal needs - it goes into quite a lot of detail about shared campaigns. But, more importantly, a whole of of the material here is easily adaptable for the sort of game where you can only play very rarely and want to skip away from a lot of the 'book-keeping' aspects of monitoring XP and assigning treasure. Good stuff.

And then the second appendix gives 18 pages of sample names.

Frankly, I'm baffled by this. Providing sample names is fine, I guess. But it's hardly the highest priority. And when the book has had its page count cut, and with the price point that marks it as a premium product, is this really the best material that WotC can find to fill it? After three years working on this fifth edition of the game, have they really produced so little useable material that they'll fill 10% of their new rules book with lists of names?

I find that a shocking decision.

So where does that leave "Xanathar's Guide"?

Ultimately, I cannot recommend this book. Yes, if you're desperate for new material, and especially for new subclasses, this book may fill that spot - and doubly so if only 'official' works will do. But other than that, and unless you can get a massive discount on the book, it's just not worth it - you'll get much better return on investment elsewhere.

Now... I said a while back that I was going to afford WotC and 5e "three last chances". Of these, the first was "Volo's Guide to Monsters", which was okay but no more than that. This would ordinarily have been the second, and likewise would have been a failure. However, as I noted at the outset, it appears that I've been given a free hit with this book. That being the case, I'm minded to allow WotC a do-over on this one - I'll give the rules supplement from next year a chance to redeem the failure of this one. (And the third last chance remains - if they do a suitable setting guide/adventure, I'll give that a go. I've also decided to expand the list of settings I'll try: in addition to Eberron and Dark Sun, add Spelljammer and "a new setting". That said, I'm very much doubtful that WotC will be formally supporting any more settings, so that may be a last chance they never test...)

Three Pillars

A much shorter one this time.

When developing 5e, WotC very wisely identified three pillars to the game: combat, interaction, and exploration. These three are probably not the only things in the game, but they make for a remarkably solid cross-section. And a game that is strong in all three is very likely to be a very strong game, while the weaker any of the pillars are, the less it's likely to appeal to some players.

I'm inclined to suggest one further thing: every player character should be able to meaningfully contribute to situations involving any of the three pillars.

(Amongst other things, that probably means that tying interaction to a single stat (Cha) that's of value to only some few character classes is a really bad idea. That creates a situation where the party Bard/Sorcerer automatically becomes the party 'face' and gets to enjoy all of that pillar while everyone else sits back and watches. But, other than simply removing the social skills and divorcing Charisma from interactions almost entirely, I'm not sure what the fix would be. Or maybe that is the fix!)

Quantum of Fun

Once upon a time, Ryan Dancey described D&D as being "twenty minutes of fun, crammed into four hours". While that's not entirely fair, it is true that there's some truth in it. As I've become older, my available time for gaming has inevitably become constrained, and my patience with time-wasting activities has likewise decreased. As such, the level of payoff Dancey implies is just no longer acceptable to me.

Unfortunately, part of the issue is systematic - RPGs seem to inevitably become overly complex, and as the game proceeds to higher levels that complexity seems to grow exponentially. And part of it is also a feature of group size - if there are eight players it will take at least twice as long to get around the table every combat round than if there are four, and probably considerably longer even than that.

But there are very definitely some things that the group can do to improve their payoff. Some of these fall to the players, some to the DM, and some require effort on both parts.

The first thing, of course, is simply to pick the right game. High-level Pathfinder with all the bells and whistles runs more slowly than a game like Star Wars d6 run with the core rules only. That doesn't mean that one game is superior to the other, and neither does it mean that you'll always gets the benefits you expect from the simpler game (if everyone at the table knows Pathfinder really well but doesn't know SWd6 at all, you'll see much less of a gain).

And the second, sadly, is to constrain the table size appropriately - as noted, eight players means that the game runs at least half as fast as with four players. There's a sweet spot, probably around 3-5 players (plus DM) that probably maximises fun, by keeping a nice, vibrant mix of voices but also keeping things moving at a good pace. (Of course, that supposes that almost everyone is there almost all the time. Irregular attendance can also derail a group.)

Some specific actions for players, then:

• Get on With It! This one is pretty simple - when your turn comes to act, be ready with your choice of action, have the dice you need easily to hand, and if there's a rules reference needed the look that up in advance. Basically, take your action as quickly and as smoothly as you can.
• Know the rules, or at least the ones pertaining to your character. This should be simple enough - every time you need to check, you're slowing up the game, so try to do it as little as possible.
• Don't argue with the DM (or other players). This one can be quite hard to stick to, and it requires a significant level of trust around the table (that the DM will be fair and that the other players won't try to cheat). But the truth is that arguing will slow the game right down, and while you might be technically correct (which is the best type of correct), the cost in terms of rate of fun means it's probably not worth it.
• Don't cheat, and don't take liberties. That's a corrollary to the above - the "don't argue" point requires that everyone around the table trusts one another, and if you cheat, you break that trust. (The "don't take liberties" one has a couple of flavours, but it's beyond the scope of this rant. Basically, make sure to apply both the benefits of your powers and the limitations.)

For DMs, the corresponding actions:

• Be as clear as you can. If not, players may declare an action that makes no sense, or they have to stop the game to ask questions and then determine their action. Either way, that slows the game down... and doubly so if a player is naturally indecisive.
• Keep the action moving. This can be as simply as gently pushing a player to keep going, it can be a case of getting the group back on track following a diversion, or it can be a matter of moving on to the next scene once the current one is played out. In many ways, the DM is the chairperson of the meeting, so it's your job to stick to the agenda.
• Publish any house rules and table conventions clearly. This ties into the players' responsibility to know the rules - how can they know them if you don't let them know? Oh, and be sure you do apply those rules you're using in a consistent and fair manner!
• Also, keep house rules to an absolute minimum. House-ruling an already-complex game means adding a whole new level of stuff that players need to keep in mind, and indeed may completely adjust the types of characters and actions that they'll want to choose, which is far from ideal. And while a simpler game may seem more forgiving of house rules, adding lots of them throws away the benefit of choosing a simple game in the first place. So if there's something you just can't live with, a house rule is probably worthwhile, but if you can live with it, maybe you should? (And if you must house rule something, a few big, bold house rules are better than lots of minor ones, or even a few very minor ones. "No multiclassing" is actually less painful than allowing multiclassing but adding loads of restrictions as to who can do it, what classes can be combined, and how the skills work.)

For players and DMs together:

• There are probably some table conventions that you want to adopt: how do you handle cocked dice, or dice on the floor, or... Decide what these are, and apply them.
• Similarly, there are probably some rules conventions you want to consider. Strictly speaking, the rule in 5e is that the player is supposed to describe an action, the DM decides whether a roll is required, and if so what roll, and only then does the player roll the dice. But there are probably some common situations where the DM will almost certainly call for a roll of a specific type (e.g. Perception), in which case maybe the convention should be for the player to just go ahead and roll? (After all, in that auto-success/auto-failure case, the DM can just ignore the result anyway.) That way, there are two less steps involved in the process... which over a campaign can add up to quite a saving. Anyway, decide what you're doing, and then stick with it!

Of course, all of the above is mostly about how the players and DM interface with the rules system of the game. While that's important, it's not the only important consideration. There are also some entire categories of activities that can probably be dropped from the game entirely (or taken away from the table) to speed things up:

• Anything that "simulates real life". Frankly, real life is mostly a sequence of dull actions and time wasting, which really isn't what I want from my entertainment. There's a reason that we never see Han Solo eating, sleeping, or visiting the WC - it's major boring shit.
• Setting watches. This is probably a holdover from days of yore, when every DM took great pleasure in ambushing the group at night if they ever forgot to specify a detailed watch sequence. Fair enough, but that really should be left in the past - the assumption these days is that even 1st level PCs are competent adventurers, so the assumption should be that unless they're exhausted then they should have the wit to set a watch. So let it go without saying - by all means have that random encounter, but make the roll first and then determine who was on watch at the time, and save yourselves the time.
• Encumbrance, tracking food, water, mundane ammunition, small change... there are some few cases where these have some interest, but for the most part you need something much simpler, or just to ignore them entirely.
• Shopping. Once upon a time (more than a decade ago), I saw a session derailed by a player insisting on a shopping trip. The party had just arrived in town and as soon as they did (but only when they did) the player grabbed the DMG and spent significant time working out what magic items he'd have his character buy. And that player just would not let the game proceed until he was done. Which was just horrible. Take all that stuff off-line as part of character management.
• XP and Levelling Up. Fortunately, this is something that happens at the end of sessions anyway, but it really should be taken away from the table entirely. Indeed, for pacing reasons it's preferable that characters not level up at the end of a session - you want to bring the session to a climax and then have everyone go home as soon as possible thereafter. Again, take all that stuff away from the table - you're there to play, so play. (And, yes, that means that D&D needs to have homework!)
• When a scene ceases to be interesting, move on. This applies to everything - in a combat, as soon as the tide is clearly in favour of the PCs, don't bother to play out the last couple of hits; in an investigation, if all the clues are found, move on; in a conversation, once everything that needs to be said has been said, and as soon as the conversation lulls, move on.

Obviously, there's an awful lot of stuff there. Not all of it will apply at all times, and there's some of it that people will disagree with. And that's fine - I'm not actually advancing this as the One True Way. But if some of these can increase the Quantum of Fun, isn't that worth doing?

The Space Elevator of the Ancient World

So I've had an idea for a game that is either genius or just terrible.

The game would be D&D 3.5e, using the old "Testament" setting supplement from Green Ronin (the name is a good indicator of what that's all about). The game would be set in the ancient city of Babel, and surround the Tower.

Said tower being a Space Elevator constructed by a significantly more advanced alien species, who rule humanity through their agents the Nephilim. The PCs would be cast in the role of rebels attempting to bring down the Tower, and thus end the reign of this alien race.

Of course, one fairly significant issue with that premise is that it is essentially jusr "Stargate" - replace ancient Egypt with Babylon, the Pyramids with the Tower, and Ra with Goliath, and you've got much the same thing.

On the other hand, it's an interesting premise. And "Stargate" was of course set long after the rebellion, rather than casting the PCs as the rebels themselves.

Well... it's an interesting thought, if nothing else.

Gaming in 2018

It looks like 2018 will be another very quiet year for gaming - my involvement in the Pathfinder campaign will have to come to an end in January (if it hasn't already), and from mid-Jan through to at least the summer I won't have time for any sort of regular campaign play.

That means that my options are limited, indeed singular - if I'm to play, it will have to be one-shots. But then, that's not too terrible, as a good one-shot can give a lot more focussed, and potentially enjoyable, experience than some campaign play.

The upshot is that I'm probably going to be on the lookout for some, limited, one-shot play. And it's likely that those will be my only games for 2018.

It's also worth my considering whether to look for one-shots to play, or whether I could consider putting together a game to run...

To Boldly Go...

On a rather more cheery note, I was able to take part in a one-shot game of the the new "Star Trek" at the weekend, which proved to be a much more enjoyable experience. It involved five players in a short adventure featuring all three pillars of the game - two combats, some exploration, and a very little interaction.

Truth be told, the adventure itself wasn't very good - as noted, there wasn't very much of the interaction that is so important to Trek, and the whole thing was pretty basic. But then, this was an introductory adventure intended to highlight what the system was about, so that wasn't too terrible.

(Also of note, and very important: we got through the entire adventure in about four hours. Contrast with Pathfinder's one throwaway combat in an hour and a half.)

The system is fairly light and breezy, with enough character customisation to provide sufficient interest there, and enough completity to the system to give it some bite. And it felt very much like a DS9-era Trek episode, which is probably pretty much ideal.

Finally, this seems to be another game that's almost perfectly suited to one-shot play, much like "Firefly". Given my likely availability for gaming over the next few years, or lack thereof, that's pretty ideal.

So, I'd definitely play this again, and would recommend it to fans of the setting. (Of course, if you don't like Trek, I really wouldn't recommend this game. Shocking, I know!)

Whoever Has Will Be Given More

I didn't really enjoy last night's Pathfinder game.

I should hasten to add that this was nothing to do with the GM, the style, the other players, or the adventure, and had very little to do with the system (though more below...). Rather, the source of my annoyance was one of the ongoing banes of my existence:

Dice.

The bulk of last night's game was taken up by a fairly lengthy combat, which spanned five rounds, and in which my character was able to attack twice a round. So, rather conveniently, that's ten attacks, which makes for some nice easy probabilities.

It's also worth noting that the opponents' AC was such that I was able to hit with a '7' or better on the die, which amounts to a 70% hit chance.

I managed a grand total of 4 hits in the combat, with 2 of those being the last two attacks in the combat, after about an hour and a half of frustration. Worse still, the second of those hits, which came an hour into the game, was immediately followed up by a roll of minimum damage.

(The situation is actually even worse than that. Each of the other players had a set of lavishly detailed, and therefore necessarily quite lengthy, combat actions. It therefore took about 15 minutes to get around the table. By contrast, it took me all of ten seconds to describe my action, roll the dice, and fail to hit twice.)

Sigh.

The thing is, the problem isn't that I have dodgy dice - the dice I have are quite capable of rolling high numbers, while the problem seems to follow me around whichever dice I use. And, of course, it only ever seems to apply to rolls that somehow matter.

Though in fairness, last night wasn't the worst example of the problem - the last time I played 5e I had a barbarian who would hit on a '6' or better and still missed almost every attack. In fact, there were some attacks I arranged to hit on a '3' and still missed. And, worse, because of the structure of 5e with it's Daily/Encounter/At-will powers, I ended up wasting all of my best powers on attacks that missed, which meant not only did my character utterly suck in that combat, but he'd then hamstrung his capabilities for the rest of the session as well.

There's not really any upshot to all of this - it's just a complaint about a sucky experience. Except for a couple of things...

First up, RPGs have a bad habit, and have done since the very start, of giving additional bonuses to people who don't need them. Way back on OD&D, the ability scores actually gave almost no in-game effect, except for one: if you were lucky enough to roll a high prime requisite, you got a bonus to earned XP. In 2nd Edition (which is more or less where I came in), rolling high ability scores, in addition to the benefits inherent in those scores, also gave access to more exclusive classes that were, of course, more powerful. 3e (and Pathfinder) tended to get rid of such things, mostly, but they were replaced by more situational bonuses - you got powers like "two-weapon rend" where characters who scored two hits in a single round got to do extra mega-damage. Which is great for that player... and really bloody sucks for the guy who can't buy a hit...

What I think is needed is actually to turn that on its head - rather than getting additional fun bonuses for the player who already rolls really well (or just outright cheats), there should be more care to ensure that the player who doesn't still gets to have a decent time. Some sort of accumulating token that can then be used to buy a hit, or to reroll a bad die, or boost damage, or something.

But the other thing that really bothered me concerned character building. Pathfinder now allows players to tweak their character's concept in about a million different ways to get their character just right. Which is great, except that if you do that, and all the other players also tweak their concepts to suit them, you run the risk of ending up with a character who is utterly and completely mediocre - on paper, he looks absolutely fine, but then you find that everything he can do someone else in the group can also do, and do better. So your two-weapon fighter is overshadowed by the rogue who also does two-weapon fighting (but has the same AC and bonus to hit, but does more damage per hit - and that before you factor in your crappy dice). Your animal-training ranger is overshadowed by the horse-lord who has all the same riding skills, and does them just that bit better. And so on - nobody does everything you can do, but for everything you can do, somebody does it better. Making your character utterly redundant.

I don't really know what the solution to that one is, except to note that in a class-based system like Pathfinder there shouldn't even be a need for a solution - the whole point of having classes is to enforce archetypes and therefore build in niche protection.

To date, the only game I won't play again is Shadowrun, on account of a really bad experience I had running that game. Pathfinder is very rapidly earning itself a spot on the same list.

The Perfect D&D Movie

Many gamers like to kid themselves that their games look and feel something like the "Lord of the Rings" films.

Most of the time, a really good RPG session will look and feel a lot more like "Thor: Ragnarok". Complete with the silliness and in-jokes, but probably with rather more "Monty Python" and "Princess Bride" references.

The Oddball

In addition to my recent thoughts regarding the "PHB+1" policy and eliminating multiclassing, I find myself increasingly drawn to a position where the number of 'oddball' characters should be restricted. This is very much a matter of personal taste, of course, but I'm generally convinced that the game isn't actually helped if the party is made up of five characters who are each more specially special than the last. (And there's a reason that "Guardians of the Galaxy" introduces us first to Quill, the only human in that party, and why "The Lord of the Rings" introduces us to the hobbits first - in that story, it is the hobbits that are "us", with Aragorn and Boromir being super-humans.)

That being the case, I'm inclined to suggest that the party should contain no more than one member of an off-beat race, no more than one character with an off-beat class, and that those two should not be the same character. (Similarly, in Star Wars, you'd have no more than one alien, one droid, and one Jedi - with those three being different characters. Of course, that means there not being any alien Jedi in the game.)

There are a number of significant issues with this, of course. Firstly, what constitutes an 'oddball' race/class? Is it a non-human race? Anything outside of the PHB? Or something else? (My answer there would be "it depends". Gut feeling, especially since I'm keen to get away from the PHB races, would be non-human races and then non-PHB classes.)

Secondly, there's the question of whether the players would actually stand for that sort of meddling. As I've noted before, the GM gets to control everything else about the game - the setting, all the NPCs, and even the rules of the game itself. My position therefore is very strongly that when it comes to the PCs, aka the one thing the players get to control: hands off! This position, of course, very strongly contradicts that.

The third issue is probably the biggest, though: if the party gets to have one oddball race and one oddball class, who decides who gets that option? And surely, if two players each come with a burning desire to play a non-human PC, that's a recipe for at least one of them to be disappointed... perhaps even to the point of leaving, or even sabotaging the game.

The upshot of all this, after 400 words of waffle, is that I don't think this sort of a restriction is the way to go. Instead, I think a better approach is probably to limit just how oddball a single character can be (that is, you can take an oddball race or an oddball class), rather than limit the number of oddball characters in the party. Probably.

Fitting the Theme

I'm increasingly of the view that if I never again see another elf, it will be too soon. Same goes for dwarves, half-elves and half-orcs, halflings, and gnomes. Dragonborn and tieflings too, for that matter, although less so. In fact, any and every race produced by WotC (and Paizo) for the various editions for the game should probably be dropped.

My fundamental problem, as I've mentioned before, is that these are mostly treated as a package of powers, with the flavour utterly ignored in favour of a "human with funny nose" approach (like the various aliens in Star Trek). Which, frankly, sucks.

Instead, I'm increasingly inclined to think that a setting (any setting) should introduce the races that it needs to fit its theme, and only the races that fit the theme. And, additionally, that each of those races should come with a package of traits that is inherently tied to theme - both that of the setting and that of the race. And no ability modifiers*, since that's inevitably the #1 reason for choosing a race. Ideally, the setup should be that you choose to play a Warforged only because you want to be a Warforged, and in playing said character you are inevitably pushed towards Warforged-ness.

(This is as opposed to the approach where you say, "I want to be a Cleric", then look for a race with Wis and Con boosts, and choose that... and then ignore everything about the race except those lovely lovely stat boosts.)

* Of course, there is one alternative to "no ability modifiers" - just let everyone choose whatever modifiers suit them best. So everyone gets to choose to assign one +2 and one +1 (or three +1s) as they see fit. And that way, the race isn't chosen to fit the class since it makes no difference in any direction.

Oh, and incidentally... I was pleasantly surprised on Monday at the Pathfinder game to see an... interesting choice of PC races on show, that very much appear to have been chosen out of interest rather than exploit. Which is nice.

PHB plus One

One of my great horrors in late-edition 3.5e (and also in Pathfinder) is that there's so much stuff that it's pretty hard to keep track of everything. Worse, there are a lot of exploits and broken combinations scattered throughout the books (though, it should be said, some of the worst offenders are right there in the first PHB - the single-classed Wizard pretty much blows everything else out of the water). This makes constructing characters a bit of a nightmare, and makes maintaining any sort of a balance in the game a real pain, too.

On the other hand, I'm not terribly keen on the notion of just declaring "core rules only" and banning all the supplements wholesale. (Although on the other other hand, I'm increasingly of the opinion that almost all RPGs run best with only those core rules, and indeed any game that needs, or "needs", supplemental material is frankly not very good anyway.)

With 5e, WotC's Adventurer's League programme have introduced a policy where PCs can be built according to a "PHB plus One" policy - you can use anything from the PHB, and then one other source. So if you want a race from "Volo's Guide" then that's fine, or if you want a spell from "Xanathar's Guide" that's fine, but you can't have both - one or the other.

Obviously, that applies some rather tight limits to the game, and cuts out on an awful lot of fun concepts... but on the other hand, it serves as a very neat way to cut down on the complexity and eliminate broken combinations (that largely don't exist in 5e anyway, but still).

That being the case, if I should run 3e again (and if I run D&D again, it's looking increasingly like being 3e), I suspect that I'll be adding a similar restriction to my house rules - PCs can be built using the PHB, the base 'setting' book (if any), and then one other sourcebook.

(Incidentally, and technically, the DMG and MM would be free as well - so if the character buys/crafts items, or summons monsters/polymorphs, the appropriate books could be referenced... but if they wanted to go beyond those core books then that would count as their "plus one".)

First Game

Tonight is the first session in a new Pathfinder campaign that I will be playing. I don't know how long that campaign will run, or indeed how long I will be able to remain involved (likely not beyond February), but it will be good to get a chance to be playing again.

Surprisingly, this will also be my first game session in almost exactly a year - since the "Dust to Dust" campaign ended in a TPK last October.

Also surprisingly, I now find myself signed up for a "Star Trek" one-shot in November as well, which should be cool.

Maybe I should start thinking about a Christmas Game... (Or maybe it's way too early - both because we're two months from Christmas, and also because my levels of inspiration oscillate between "meh" and "non-existent" right at the moment, which is no mindset in which to run a game.)

Ten Years

I've just realised that it has been ten years this year since D&D 4th edition was announced, and ten years since Dragon magazine ceased production (Dungeon, too). Which is quite a thought.

That means it has been ten years since WotC so badly mishandled the edition change, ten years since the Edition Wars poisoned ENWorld, ten years since I started to fall out of love with D&D.

And also ten years since Pathfinder started. So it's not all bad. Though I do rather wish that things had gone differently...

I Just Want to Play

I've recently concluded that Pathfinder is, pretty definitively, not for me - not just as a DM (which I've known for some time), but even as a player. And the reason for that is very simple: too many options.

To an extent this has always been true - the game started off excessively option-heavy. It has since exploded... which is absolutely fine provided the #1 option that is available is to simply opt-out of all that stuff.

Unfortunately, there's what is possible, there's what is practical, and there's what the peer group will effectively allow you to do. But in many ways it's like trying to opt out of social media - yes, it's possible, but if everybody you know is using it heavily and they insist on using it as their primary (or sole) means of communication, you're basically screwed.

The upshot is that it looks like opting out of the mess of options in Pathfinder may well not be a practical choice - not only will you end up with a character that just sucks (because of the power-creep inherent in those options), but the local group will constantly be pushing you to use them.

And, faced with that, it looks like I may have to opt out of Pathfinder as a whole, as just being not for me. Which is a shame.

Worse than that, since I'm also opting out of 5e as being a big pile of pish (which isn't an entirely fair assessment, but I was utterly soured on the game by the time I'd left ENWorld, largely due to that community's insistence that it was flawless in every regard), that takes me out of 90% of the RPG field. At which point, it looks easier to step out of the remaining 10% than trying to find a game I can just play.

Maybe it's time I really did become an ex-gamer.

Gimmicks

A thought: if I were starting today, I wouldn't be interested in D&D.

The reason for this is that as I've grown older (and become more set in my ways) my patience for newness for the sake of newness has shrunk, and my patience for gimmicks has become almost non-existent. It's not a resistance to change per se, but if you expect me to do something different then there have to be obvious benefits to doing it the new way - as I've said before, it needs to be "better enough" to justify the change. If you try to sell me on a new way to do essentially the same things as before about as well as before, you're on a hiding to nothing.

A particularly good example of this is music file formats. In principle, I wish we'd settled on a file format other than MP3 for music - in particular, a lossless format would be a better choice overall. However, the reality is that MP3 has effectively won that battle.

And so, if you now expect me to adopt a new music file format, especially one that requires that I install either a custom codec or, worse, an entire custom player, you're going to get significant resistance - the sad fact is that my hearing isn't good enough to actually notice a difference, so you're asking me to go through a bunch of hassle to get the same result. No thanks.

(Likewise, there's a debate regarding PDFs for the 5th edition books. WotC have now made electronic versions available through their "D&D Beyond" offering. Apparently, these electronic versions offer a whole bunch of features that PDF doesn't. Which is nice, I'm sure. But, as far as I'm concerned, they might as well not have bothered. Let me know when they get around to releasing PDFs.)

When it comes to RPGs, then, my tolerance for gimmicks is marginal. These are, fundamentally, very simple games. If you decided to tack on a whole load of additional bits, those bits need to offer a clear benefit... and, mostly, they don't. Adding cards, tokens, and such things just add new stuff to get lost. Or more stuff that I have to cart from place to place. Oh, and of course they add new ways for the company to charge money.

Which is fair enough - but where's the value-add?

Which brings us to the FFG "Star Wars" game (and their "Warhammer" third edition) and also the Goodman's "Dungeon Crawl Classics", neither of which I even considered adopting, for one simple reason: custom dice. In the case of FFG, the dice are marked with specialised symbols that have some sort of meaning within the game, and which therefore are of no use for any other game. DCC, on the other hand, makes use of the standard d4, d6, etc, but also adds a d3, d5, d7, and so on. Which is less annoying, since at least it just means I'd need the dice, rather than having to learn to interpret what they mean, but it was still enough for me to ignore the game until recently.

Of course, the argument against games that require specialist dice applies equally to another rather well-known RPG: D&D itself. After all, before I started playing I didn't have any polyhedral dice, and compared to 'regular' dice they're awkward and hard to get. (And also, the purist in my wants to note that dice with numbers on are an abomination. Pips all the way!) What's more, adopting those specialist dice mostly doesn't get you much - the difference between a d4, d6, and d8 probably isn't worth worrying about, and becomes effectively meaningless once you add modifiers to the rolls. (That said, adding the d12 and d20 does have some value. And the d% does also, though there's not really sufficient justification to have both a d10 and a d12, and also the d10 isn't a Platonic solid so should be rejected on those grounds. :) )

The upshot of all of this is that I've come to the conclusion that my rejection of games that require custom dice is largely due to a fairly arbitrary distinction based on "what I have already". Plus, it helped significantly that I was recently gifted a copy of the DCC quickstart rules, which are interesting enough to justify investing in some dice.

Oh, and it also leads to another conclusion: the best advertisement for an RPG is an evangelist.

(That said, I'm still opposed to FFG and all their works!)

A Chance to Play!

It looks like I might be getting to play in a Pathfinder game in the next little while. Which is very cool - it's been far too long since I was on the other side of the screen. (Plus, given my utter lack of inspiration right now, I'm not in a position to run a game anyway.) The game in question is going to be a Wuxia-inspired martial arts extravaganza, which should be fun.

My initial thought was to go for a fairly simple 'everyman' Fighter, thus being the perfect conduit for exposition as required. However, another player has already grabbed the Fighter, so my second notion is a disreputable Ranger specialising in two-weapon fighting. Because 'disreputable' is always fun.

Only problem is that now I need a two-weapon combo, and I have no ideas. :)

Crossing the Streams

Once upon a time, I had a blog about gaming titled "Rules!". Truth be told, reading through the archives is always a bit of a strange process for me, because my views about gaming have evolved very considerably in the decade or so since it was last updated, and even moreso since the blog started, back in the heady days of 2003.

However, I'm generally not one to hide from the past, and I'm also going through something of a 'spring-cleaning' phase of life. As a consequence, I've started the process of consolidating the contents of that blog with the contents of this one, with a view to finally deleting that blog. (None of which is really necessary, but as I said, I'm trying to clean things up a bit.)

Oh, and actually, I think I'll be looking to bring across the gaming-related posts from Part N to this blog, too, for yet more completeness. Of course, that's a long-term project!

Anyway, if you find yourself wondering why this blog suddenly has posts from waaay back (indeed, from before the inevitable First Post), that's why.

Back to Square One

Having moved to Livingston, one of the things I was keen to do was to make contact gamers, in the hope of setting up a game without significant travel. Alas, it appears that the public game club has folded since last I checked, and while I suspect there may well be gamers out there, they are back to having a low profile.

Which is a very familiar situation: Falkirk was pretty much the same some eight years ago!

Now, on the one hand, that's fine - in theory, I know what worked for solving the problem last time. And while you can never be sure the results would be the same, I'm at least no worse off than I was.

On the other hand, I'm eight years older, I have rather less time than I did... and, frankly, I don't know if I care enough. After all, if there was a club but it folded, perhaps that means the interest in the local area just isn't there.

Hmm.

I'll need to give some thought to where I am on this one. I'm starting to think that the answer may be abandon campaign play, and consider running fewer, longer 'event' games on a more irregular basis.

As I said, I'll need to give it some thought.

What Do I Want to Play?

Having unpacked all my RPG stuff from its boxes and sorted it onto the shelves, I find I am ready to get back into gaming. And with upcoming events, I'm keen to get some gaming in before the turn of the year - it's not like I'm going to have much time in 2018!

However, I find myself facing a pressing question to which I don't have a good answer: what do I want to play?

One thing I do know is that I'm feeling rather bored with D&D, Pathfinder, and the spin-offs thereof, so that's out. And I'm not dead keen on other d20 games, either. Beyond that?

I suppose one thing that does grab me, somewhat at least, is the notion of doing some Star Wars d6 gaming - possibly getting a group together for some of the old adventures in a retro-gaming style? Alternately, Firefly is always good if I can get a crew together.

But what I really want is, simply put, something new - give me something I haven't tried before, something that will inspire me.

But what? What?

Wasting My Time

The other part of yesterday's rant concerns another thing that is frequently said about RPG products: that they're just a bunch of tools for the GM to make of what he wishes.

Well, that's just crap.

Here's the thing: I have the ability to create my own adventures, or settings, or even rules if need be. That is, I have the ability to do all these things. What I am lacking in is time.

That being the case, I don't want products that I can take and fold, spindle, mutilate, and otherwise turn into something great. That's just taking all the fun bits of running a game and outsourcing them to someone else. What I want to outsource is all of the work, so that I get those fun bits.

What I expect from an RPG product is that it works for its stated purpose out of the box. If it can then be stripped for parts and used elsewhere then that's a bonus, I suppose, but it's secondary to the main thing. But whatever you state as the purpose of your product is what I expect it to do. (And for that reason I was extremely negative about "Storm King's Thunder" - that was actually a pretty good setting guide, wrapped up in a pretty dire adventure.)

Likewise, if I'm looking for short adventures, pointing me towards one of the storyline books saying that they can be pulled apart chapter by chapter is not helpful. Yes, I know it's possible to do that thing, but that's work I don't want to have to do. (Not to mention that those chapters, taken individually, often make for pretty poor adventures. For the same reason that you wouldn't tend to just read a random chapter from somewhere in the middle of a novel - losing the context of everything that has gone before, and everything that happens thereafter means you miss out on a huge amount.)

So, what I'm saying is this:

If you publish a game with significant rules problems out of the gate, for which the solution is "well, you can house-rule it", you are wasting my time and I'm not interested.

If you publish a rules supplement that I can't just drop into my game as-is and have it work, you're wasting my time and I'm not interested.

If you publish an adventure with significant story problems, or one with serious balance issues, or other problems that you expect me to fix, you are wasting my time, and I'm not interested.

Also, if all you're offering is D&D/Star Wars/Warhammer/whatever with some small fix to some small issue, you're still wasting my time, and I'm not interested. I'm in the market for something new... but it really does need to be something new.

And I'm not buying any new editions of any games I own... at least for a very long time, possibly ever.

And I think that's enough ranting for the time being!

"This is a Cheap Hobby"

Yesterday was the point where I came to unpack and sort all my RPG materials for shelving. And it was the point where I was, once again, reminded of one of the pernicious lies that is told about the RPG hobby: that it is a cheap one.

Now the thing is that RPGs can be a cheap hobby - provided you buy the core rulebooks for games you actually play regularly, and nothing else.

But the moment you move beyond that your price-per-use drops way off. Core rulebooks (for games you actually play) are used very extensively, and thus justify just about any price point. But supplements, settings, adventures? No, no, and no.

Worse than that, it would be nice to think that making the additional investment in any of these things would result in a better at-table experience. But for the most part this simply isn't true: rules supplements tend to complicate what should be a pretty simple game, often with very little pay-off. Added character guides provide more character-building options... but the ones that will see use at the table are the ones most likely to break your game.

Which leaves settings and adventures, which should be safer ground. But good luck finding the good ones - buying sight-unseen gives you very little chance of hitting on anything worthwhile, while good RPG reviews are nigh-on impossible to find, especially now that the edition wars have turned review sites into a terminal battleground between fanbois and h8rs.

(For their part, publishers of course advertise their latest wares as "must have" items. Of course they do! But for the most part, a fairer labelling would be "avoid!")

And so I once again found myself unpacking hundreds of books, many of which have never seen at-table usage, most of which will never again see any at-table usage, and I found myself marvelling at the waste of it all. I've spent many thousands of pounds on books over the years, including more than £1,000 on Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes alone (and many people have spent way more than I have), and most of what I have to show for it is back-breaking piles of paper of no residual value.

But, hey, it's a cheap hobby, yeah?

Coming Out of Storage

We're getting towards the end of the unpacking, which means we're also getting towards the point where my RPG books will be coming out of their boxes and going back onto their shelves. In amongst everything, I've taken the opportunity to repurpose our DVD shelves for RPG books (we'll get new DVD shelves soon), which means I'm not just back up to two sets of shelves, but actually up to three for the first time! (Hopefully, this will mean they're less overloaded, and therefore last longer.)

My plan for the organisation is slightly different from previously: I intend to split them into 28 piles - one for each letter of the alphabet, a catch-all for things that otherwise don't fit, and a special pile for those games I'm particularly likely to use soon (notably D&D 3e and 5e, Firefly, and the W.O.I.N. pair). My plan, then, is for the first 27 of these piles to be fitted onto two of the sets of shelves, with the 'current' games and also our boardgames going onto the third set.

Of course, the other great advantage of this change is that I can get back to some gaming! Maybe. Hopefully. For a while...

Stone Circles - a thought on cultural appropriation in D&D

I was thinking about stone circles the other day, as you do. And, in particular, I was thinking about finding a role for them in Terafa. And while thinking on this, my thoughts proceeded to stay in an entirely different direction, as they are sometimes wont to do.

Initially, I was considering whether a stone circle could just perform much the same role as they did in the real world - essentially as a very ornate clock. But that seemed rather bland - what about casting them instead as a count down to some event. That struck me as being better. But...

Then it occurred to me that actually the stone circles in the real world were never just a clock. They also served as a centre for religious worship, as a focal point for communities, as a market place... oh, and there's at least some evidence of their being used for ritual slaughter (or, perhaps, just a great big barbeque).

Of course, it's also worth considering that many of these uses were not the ones the original builders intended - the site would have been taken by others, who modified it for their own use and claimed it as their own (that is, cultural appropriation).

All of which got me to thinking that perhaps a stone circle should be a fairly detailed adventure site, with no fewer than four layers of uses about the place, two of them known about and two of them being secrets to be learned by the heroes:

Layer One: My first layer of usage would be that of the current inhabitants of the place, who use the stone circle as a community focus point - they have annual harvest festivals within the great ring.

Layer Two: The previous owners of the site were a tribe of bugbears who were driven out about a century ago. They used the site for burials, with many of their champions buried in barrows around the area. Much treasure can be found here, but much danger also, for the spirits of those champions linger here still. Of course, this usage is known to the locals, as their history records the presence of the bugbears, and the burial mounds are likewise known.

Layer Three (secret): Some time prior to the bugbears arriving and claiming the site, the stone circle was home to a cult of demon-worshippers. Their lord was a dark and fell creature who demanded ritual sacrifices from his followers in the depths of the winter solstice. The stones are thus saturated with the blood of those sacrifices, and indeed tainted by the spiritual energies thus released.

Layer Four (secret): Finally, we come to the original purpose of the stone circle. In the distant past, a dark and terrible faerie lord was imprisoned here by lizardfolk in the area. These lizardfolk were servants, and some say worshippers, of an ancient black dragon, who fought the faerie lord to a standstill while his followers enacted his capture. However, the ritual was imperfect, and so the circle counts down to the release of this captured lord - every year the shadows of the stones grows just a little shorter, and when the shadows are gone entirely, the imprisoned lord will once again be freed. (Of course, the truth of this is known only to the draconic spawn of the ancient black dragon... and she's not for sharing.)

The notion here, then, would be that the PCs initially arrive for the harvest festival on the site, and gradually become embroiled in strange goings on surrounding the location. Naturally, they may find themselves enticed by the prospect of fortune and glory in the burial mounds, but as the psychic energies around the place swell, and as the release of the faerie lord becomes nearer, they would have more to deal with.

Right now, it's only a half-formed idea... but there's some promise there, I think.

About Phantasmal Force

I must confess that I've had a number of issues with the phantasmal force spell over the year, largely due to the mental and linguistic contortions I've gone through to try to understand exactly what the spell name means: what exactly is a "phantasmal force"?

I've been somewhat embarrassed recently to learn the answer, which is stunningly obvious in hindsight and which also eliminates all such issues.

Phantasmal Force is a spell that came right out of D&D's wargaming roots, going back as far as "Chainmail". And what it creates is the illusion of a force - that is, a body of troops. So a "phantasmal force" would be an illusionary unit of pikemen, or of archers, or whatever.

D'oh!

My Fix for Silence

As I've mentioned before, the silence spell has been one of my pet peeves for a very long time. It was intended as an easy, low-level stealth spell for wizards, but very rapidly morphed as a loophole was discovered - because the spell didn't allow any other spells with Verbal components to be cast while in the area of effect, it because a very quick and easy way to shut down enemy spellcasters.

Pretty much ever since, there have been efforts put in place to get around this issue - the vocalise spell, the Silent Spell metamagic feat, and so on. The problem being that these have tended to be either very situational, or too high cost, or otherwise of limited usefulness.

My fix for the issue is rather simpler - the silence spell negates any unintentional or incidental noise in the area. So, a character under the effect of the spell won't have to worry about their armour clanking, and won't cause a massive cascade of noise as he falls over the drum kit someone left lying around.

But the spell is easily cancelled by anyone in the area - simply clapping one's hands, or speaking clearly, or giving a shout will end the spell. (Or, indeed, kicking over that drum kit. The key bit is that the noise being made is intentional.)

This, of course, massively reduces the power level of the silence spell. But that's probably a good thing - it makes it rather closer in scope to invisibility, which likewise masks the caster from one detection by one of the senses, and which is also second level. (There's also an argument for a higher-level improved silence which retains the offensive applications now removed from silence itself. But that's a discussion for another time...)

An Epiphany: Ritual Magic

A very quick post today, because I've had a realisation that I can't believe didn't come to me sooner but which I'm still working out the details of...

Ritual magic should be modelled basically as the crafting of a single-use magic item, probably with immediate activation.

And that's all, for now. More to come, if and when I can sort out some detail.

The Scry/Teleport Exploit

Back when 3e was new (perhaps before then, but 3e was when I really started to hear about it), an exploit of the rules appeared - because attack is so much more effective than defence in D&D, high-level characters could (and should) routinely bypass adventures by first scrying extensively on the end-boss of the adventure, then teleport to his or her location, and kill said end-boss.

Of course, various suggestions were put forward for combatting this. And, indeed, with 4e (and now 5e), WotC provided a solution by removing arbitrary teleport and instead imposing teleport circles - and without the secret code for a given circle, teleport was impossible.

Which is fair enough, but I prefer a different approach.

(Of course, the best solution is just to agree with the players, "gonnie no do that". But that's crazy talk, of course.)

My preferred solution is to add a small bit of text to the teleport spell (and variants) noting that it does not allow you to pass a threshold. That is, you can teleport anywhere in the public realm, but it simply isn't possible to teleport into a temple, dungeon, home, or whatever else. (It does allow you to teleport within one of these buildings, but that same would apply to an inner sanctum, bed chamber, or similar.)

This mostly solves the problem, without getting rid of arbitrary teleports (which are a feature of some of the source material). It also, usefully, mostly fits with the genre conventions (although note what I said recently about purity in fantasy!).

Mostly, though, I just like it as an easy fix for the issue.

A Bit More on Dwarves

I'm still working through some of my ideas on the dwarves of Terafa. My basic concept is that they're heavily based on Samurai - hence their warriors being sworn to service of a named lord, and their use of the two ceremonial weapons (though typically not together), and indeed the banded armour and helms.

The other key element, of course, is that bit of their history that concerns the great loss of racial memory - they have existed for longer than they know, but at some point they were enslaved by masters who stole their ability to form memories. This, of course, influences their psychology profoundly, giving rise to the importance of old tales and history, of ancestor worship, and of questions of identity.

Incidentally, this has the effect that "dwarven" runes are, in fact, not dwarven at all - the runic alphabet they use was something they inherited - dwarves awaking from their fugue came to consciousness in full possession of their language, skills, and the like and have never seen any need to change. But the language isn't theirs. It may or may not be that of their former masters, of course. It is therefore entirely possible for adventurers deep in the Underdark to encounter text that looks like dwarven runes, but is not.

The seven dwarven subraces are the well-known Hill and Mountain dwarves, plus the Sundered (dwarves who quit their underground homes immediately after reaching the surface and now don't/won't go back), Deep Dwarves (who ended their exodus early and so remain in homes in the Underdark), and three subraces that the dwarves don't talk about. Each of these has been scarred by the enslavement in one way or another: the Dvergar remain in their old homes and comfort themselves in endless, pointless labour; the Derro are simply insane; and the Lost had their intellects broken by their enslavement.

(The association between dwarves and the number seven is, of course, intentional.)

And that's more or less where I am on that. I'm sure there's more to come, but it will come if and when I can firm up my ideas some more.

Guns and Psionics in D&D

One of the never-ending debates in D&D circles concerns the big question of whether or not guns and/or psionics 'should' be in D&D. Some people really like one or both of these elements, while some others really don't - typically based on some notion of purity in fantasy and/or historical accuracy.

A large part of the issue with purity in fantasy is that the genre has been very self-referential for a very long time - Tolkien was by far the biggest influence prior to D&D, and much of fantasy since the late 70's has aped either Tolkien or D&D. That's why we keep seeing the same Tolkien-derived races over and over again, it's why we keep seeing the same pseudo-medieval trappings, and so on.

But D&D's influences were much wider than just Tolkien, and while neither the Conan or Lankhmar stories featured guns, Barsoom did (and not just Renaissance-era flintlocks, either), while Elric had all sorts of things going on.

Indeed, much of D&D in actual play resembles the old He-Man cartoon, or the "Flash Gordon" movie, or indeed something like "Guardians of the Galaxy" a lot more closely than it does "Lord of the Rings". (And, in fact, the two "Avengers" films show a much better example of high-level play than just about anything else.)

So, yeah, it's probably a good thing for D&D to support firearms and psionics both - as options. In fact, ideally, the game should be much more modular across the board, so that the DM can build his setting and/or adventures to suit his group. (Want "Guardians of the Galaxy"? Include everything. Want "Lord of the Rings"? Use only the divination and enchantment spells. Or something like that.) So, yeah, let's have firearms suitable for pirates and swashbucklers, and also ray guys for He-Man and Flash. Lets have telepaths, and empaths, and weird scientists and artificers, and elementalists and diviners, and...

Of course, that requires that the DM be empowered to pick and choose from the available options as he sees fit, which was something WotC resisted for a long time (since player empowerment sold books), and it also requires that those various options actually exist (which is, unfortunately, not so much the case now).

(Also, it would really help if WotC would step away from their D&D branding iron. While I can understand why they want to say "in D&D, psionic powers are this", that tends to be less than helpful for the DM who wants to flavour things differently - especially if what the DM wants proves incompatible with the mechanics WotC construct to support their concept. But that's not going to happen - given the size of the beast, the needs of the brand are going to triumph over all else.)

The Quest for Memory

The dwarves of Terafa have no creation myth. Their earliest tales tell of their ancestors waking as if from a dreamless slumber, finding themselves on the banks of sightless seas within the earth, surrounded by the tools of their labours. What those labours were, or on whose behalf they worked is a mystery.

In the aftermath of their Awakening, most of the dwarven peoples began a great exodus, travelling ever upwards and away from their enslavement. Along the way, they established new traditions, a new history (oral first, and then written). As the generations passed, they came to venerate their ancestors, and then to worship them outright. In time, they rediscovered the gods that they had forgotten.

Finally, they reached the surface world, a shattered people but also one tempered by their great ordeal. And, alas, they promptly found themselves caught up in a battle for survival and for freedom again, the former against hordes of orcs infesting their new lands; the latter against the Sol. The dwarves won the former, but their success in the latter was certain - one of their great mountain holds remained free while the other fell into slavery.

Today, the dwarves are again free. Once again, it is no great rebellion or quest for freedom that has seen this occur, but rather the disappearance of their former masters. Regardless of the cause, the dwarves celebrate.

Dwarven society in Terafa is structured along clan lines, with identity being of paramount importance to them - the loss of their ancient history has left them sensitive to questions about who and what they are. Consequently, every dwarf expects to know his place in society - his family and his craft, his superiors and those who owe him homage. The loss of such things, and the dishonour that goes with it, is the most grevious wound a dwarf can suffer.

Dwarves are strongly associated with the number seven. They have seven gods, each of whom has an appointed time to rule (with the god of justice, Klos, currently being in the ascendency). There are seven great dwarven subraces (though they do not speak of some of these kin). There are seven great trades, and there are seven things they seek to extract from the earth in their mines (coal, diamonds, iron, salt, silver, tin, and adamantium).

Dwarven military forces are based on skirmish units and small forces rather than massed groupings. This is largely a consequence of them fighting mostly within the earth where space is at a premium, and proved a weakness against the forces that awaited them on the surface. Dwarven chiefs will have a small number of sworn warriors, each of whom will command a small squad. Dwarven sworn warriors are typically equipped with banded armour and close-faced helms. These warriors tend to favour an axe, hammer, pick, or sword, and will carry two such weapons - a larger weapon wielded in both hands, and smaller one for close-in work. Dwarven sworn warriors tend not to make use of shields, though the squads they command are skilled in forming the shield wall.

History Through Storytelling

Last night, LC and I were in Waterstones Glasgow where Alan Lee was doing a book signing as part of a tour to promote "Beren and Lúthien", the 'new' J.R.R. Tolkien book. (Like with "Children of Húrin", it's constructed from various drafts and notes that he left. Unlike the previous book, though, it doesn't appear Tolkien left any real ending to the extended version of this story, so it will be curious to see how that is handled.)

While at the event, I found myself considering the Silmarillion, the history of the First Age of Middle Earth, and also the handling of history in RPG books (especially setting books).

Very frequently, I've found that setting books do two things that I don't much care for: firstly, they seem almost duty-bound to present a whole bunch of crappy fiction throughout the book. This is generally intended to set the scene and provide flavour, which would be a noble end if it wasn't generally awful.

And then, secondly, when the book finally gets around to presenting history, it does so as a dull recounting of facts, probably starting with a thousand-year timeline, followed by a lengthy essay detailing what happened in the various ages. Again, it's information that absolutely is relevant to the setting... it's just deadly dull. (Or, at least, that's the case far too often.)

What occurred to me last night is that, actually, the first of these problems is quite possibly the solution to the second.

The thing is, if you take an average person (that is, someone who hasn't studied history), and quiz them on the past, you'll almost certainly find that they don't know nothing about history, but that what they do know is probably a bunch of fragments, a number of stories (generally around the 'great men'), all very disorganised and rather unreliable. Go back in time to a period before literacy was near-universal, and it becomes even more of a mess.

So... why not present the history of your RPG setting in the same way?

If I recall correctly (which is unlikely, since it was nearly a decade ago that I read this), one of Tolkien's intentions when presenting the history of Middle Earth, was that he'd have four long-form stories making up the tent-poles of his mythology (of which "Children of Húrin" and "Beren and Lúthien" are two), plus a whole bunch of other, shorter stories to round it out.

So, I could envisage an RPG presenting the history in much the same way - instead of the crappy fiction at the chapter breaks, present at each of them a two-page short-form version of one of a dozen historical tales for the setting. Instead of the standard ten pages of history, present a one-paragraph synopsis of a bunch of other stories. And then, for those who are particularly keen, present a book "The History of {Setting}", giving fictionalised accounts of the history of the world - focussing heavily on the heroes and villains, the big acts and events... and not so much on the minutae or even the dates. Just a rough chronology where this story happens some time after that story, but who really knows?

This has the potential advantage of being a little more interesting, it makes the history of the world a source of flavour rather than just data, it presents it in a manner that most of the characters in the setting would know it... and it also has the key advantage of making it all usefully ambiguous and unreliable, allowing the DM to run with it in all manner of ways.

Of course, maybe it's a crazy idea. Given that nobody much seems to be publishing settings these days (except Golarion, which has the history pretty well documented), I guess we're unlikely to find out.

It Finally Happened...

A while back, I swore off using DriveThruRPG - they'd been hacked, and although I didn't get hit it was a pain having to replace my credit card. At that time, I took the view that I wasn't going back there unless and until they happened to have something I just had to have - which was always unlikely, given that I wasn't even going to look.

But against all the odds, it has actually happened: they're currently offering megabundles of some key D&D books: a 1st Edition set, and a Planescape set. But the best of all is a Known World set, which is truly exceptional. And that's the one that's a must-have.

I wonder if they take PayPal?

The Fastness of the Divine

Last of the "other places"... for now.

After the Great Deluge, when Choriam the Morningstar led the remnants of humanity to Terafa, they found a green and unspoiled world. And all was well, for a time. However, in Terafa's firmament there were other gods, and they were jealous of Choriam and consipired against him. They seduced the men of that age into following their ways, and cast man's rightful god into bondage, denying him his rightful place.

Ages passed, and mankind prospered despite himself. In time, all knowledge of the Morningstar passed out of memory, and the name Choriam was lost. But in the darkness, he endured.

Eventually, Choriam freed himself from his prison, and reclaimed his birthright as the sole god of mankind. He overturned the false gods. In the struggle that ensured, many of these were slain, victims of Cavcari's Last Invocation - a true proof of their weakness.

But in the end, once Choriam had laid his enemies low before him, he chose mercy. Rather than slay the remaining gods outright, he confined them to a great prison: the Fastness of the Divine. Their forms he petrified, and fixed in a great ring in the skies over Terafa, there to watch as a constant reminder of the price of jealousy and ambition.

The Fastness of the Divine is one of the benefits of the "ultimate edition" of the setting that I'm working on - it's actually something I came up with for another setting that happens to fit really well here. I've always liked the image of a planet with a ring system, though I'm reasonably sure it doesn't work outside of fantasy. So the idea of having a fantasy world with a ring system, and that being a fixture in the cosmology of the setting, is one I rather like.

The Fastness of the Divine isn't really a plane, as such - like the moon, it's really just another part of the Prime plane. However, actually getting there probably requires planar transport, so it works.

The rocks that make up the Fastness are, essentially, the petrified remains of the gods, but held in a statis that the 'true' dead gods don't enjoy - thus rendering mining of the essence of the gods impossible. However, the Fastness is not uninhabited; it is a place of pilgrimage for powerful worshippers of those gods, and also a gathering point for many of their agents, demonic and otherwise.

(Incidentally, it's also worth noting that the Fastness is the prison for the gods of man only. The elves and dwarves have their own patron deities, while the goblin races have gods that they don't so much worship as attempt to intimidate.)

One last thing: this ties in, in large part, to the nature of the divine in Terafa. Here, the dominant religion is monotheistic, though flavoured by the use of various saints to intercede with Choriam himself. The secondary faith is much more naturalistic, and mostly noted for being the source of primal (druidic) magic. However, there's also more than a little of the conflict between "the old gods and the new" going on - although imprisoned, the other gods are not entirely without power...

The Law of the Preincarnate

Having outlined the cosmology and outlined every single thing that makes it up, I'm now immediately going to discuss one of the other places that is to be found. This one, like the Dreamlands, isn't a Transitive Plane, but neither is it really an Inner Plane, an Outer Plane, or whatever else. It just is, floating somewhere out there in the Astral Sea. (Whether it connects to the Great Web is much less clear. Since the latter is the work of mortals, and since almost no mortals are even aware it exists, that suggests perhaps not...)

The Hall of the Preincarnate

This is the realm of the Maybes and Not-Yets, the souls of the Unborn. It is a great hall, vast in size and filled with warmth and light, where the Preincarnate rest until such time as they are called into being. The Hall of the Preincarnate is not a place for mortals, or even the divine - it is guarded by the Neverwere, planar beings whose sole purpose is to protect the Unborn from being corrupted by the echoes of life. They seek any who venture into the Hall and eject them, and then sorrowfully cull any of the Unborn who might have been influenced by exposure.

Incidentally, the Hall of the Preincarnate also has an annex for those souls whose destiny is to be reincarnated across the ages - a place to retire from one life and rest while awaiting the next. But the Neverwere make sure to keep these souls strictly apart from the Unborn, in order to prevent corruption.

The Law of the Preincarnate

One of the great edicts of reality, on a par with Cavcari's Last Invocation, is the great Law of the Preincarnate, which states that all mortal souls must have free will.

The major consequence of this is that a god or demon lord can seek to influence mortals, and can even lay traps for them that ensnare them into acting in certain ways, but they cannot both have a soul and be denied free will. All compulsion effects must have a finite duration or a condition by which they end. And it also means that if a god or demon lord requires a servitor race that does not have free will, that race cannot be granted souls, or must have at least the potential for rebellion.

But there is another consequence of the Law of the Preincarnate, which concerns the use of magic around the birth of a mortal. Specifically, in the two days and nights immediately prior and immediately after the birth of a child, the use of magic to affect that child is strictly forbidden. In fact, magic of a divine, demonic, or primal origin simply will not affect a mother in labour or her newborn child.

Other forms of magic, notably the arcane and pact magic, will continue to function, but they run a terrible risk - the fusing of the Unborn soul with the child may be prevented or may be corrupted to terrible effect. Of course, this may be the intention of the caster, though they often live to regret their hubris.

It's worth noting that I don't expect this detail ever to come up in 'live' gameplay - I've written elsewhere about my general dislike of pregnancy as a plotline in storytelling (because it's always exactly the same story beats in exactly the same order), and so I'm hardly likely to include it in a game except as an incidental factor.

However, the Law of the Preincarnate is mostly about world-building. Specifically, I was involved in a discussion some years ago in which it was noted that the widespread use of divine magic would inevitably have a major effect on society and demographics - one of the obvious uses would be to eliminate infant mortality, amongst other things rendering the wicked stepmother an endangered species.

In amongst thinking about that, it also occurred to me that there were various possibilities that could be opened if that particular door was closed - in particular, since so much of gothic horror is about man meddling with forces beyond his comprehension, there's an easy story there about what happens if a desperate would-be father, denied help from a divine source, turns instead to a necromancer (vivomancer?) to save his wife and unborn child. Naturally, such a thing would work... sort of.

And, finally, there are the Neverborn, the key villains in another campaign I never quite got going. These were Unborn souls that Should Have Been but, for whatever reason, were denied. I haven't locked down exactly what these are as yet, and may never do so, but there's the core of an idea there.

(Lastly, a quick reminder: it's just a game. Nothing here should be taken as my opinion about anything outside of that context!)

Outer Planes

The Outer Planes of the cosmology of Terafa are also relatively simple, since there are only two. Or maybe three. Okay, it's not quite as simple as all that...

The Celestial Realms: Or "The Heavens", or just "Heaven", this is the alleged resting place for all goodly mortal souls when they pass. It's a realm of light and peace, where pain cannot be felt, and where everything is just better. However, it is also strangely deserted - instead of the expected hosts, the Celestial Realms are home to a few angelic beings of a distinctly elemental, and distinctly unapproachable, manner.

The Broken Gates: Deep within the Celestial Realms is a great set of gates, behind which can be glimpsed a staircase rising into still greater light. But the gates are broken and the way beyond is shut.

The Dark: Also "The Outer Dark", "The Hells", "The Abyss", "The Pit", or just "Hell", this is a teeming realm of destruction and pain. This is the alleged destination of all mortal souls who do not enter the Celestial Realms. But, again, those souls seem to be largely absent. Which is not to say that the Dark is empty - it is home to a multitude of demons and devils, who struggle against one another for supremacy and who plot ever for their access to the mortal realm.

And that's about it. The truth is that I've never been a huge fan of planar adventures, and especially of the Outer Planes, so while the setting needs some sort of a cosmology, I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. Of course, it's always worth bearing in mind that all of this might be the accepted wisdom of mortal theologians and philosophers, and may not be entirely accurate. And as for those wizards and others who are capable of visiting the Outer Planes, well, who's to say that their perceptions are truly accurate, and not molded by what they expect to see?

Inner Planes

The penultimate building block in my cosmology are the so-called "Inner Planes". In the default cosmology, these are the building blocks of the multiverse - the elemental planes and the energy planes.

In my cosmology these planes are rather simpler: they simply don't exist. Instead, positive energy comes from the suns, negative energy from the void between the stars, and the elements are all around. Elementalists don't conjure elementals and other servants from a separate plane - they draw them from the Prime plane itself.

As such, the only Inner Planes, as such, are alternate Prime planes. Of course, since other Primes may tie into their own cosmologies (it's complex...), the absence of Inner Planes around Terafa in no way suggests they don't exist somewhere...

The Dreamlands

Some scholars contend that the planes that now exist were first brought into existence through the slumbering dreams of the gods - whether the gods that exist now, those that have since passed beyond recall, or some other source is a bone of further contention. As evidence for this claim, they point to the Dreamlands, micro-planes brought into being as mortals slumber. Weak and transient as they are, they remain real and accessible to those with the means, so what might the dreams of a god become?

The Dreamlands are not transient planes (as detailed previously) as such , as they do not provide a means of travelling between or within other planes. Indeed, they are accessible only through the Prime plane and the Astral Sea - even the Great Web does not reach the Dreamlands.

The Dreamlands are micro-planes that are finite in size and temporary in nature - when the sleeper wakes, any travellers within the Dream are ejected into the Astral Sea. Within the Dreamlands, time is subjective as are all manner of physical laws. Further, each Dream is unique - the dreams of a child might be flying unicorns on rainbows, while the troubled sleep of a dragon would be a realm of terror, might, and gold to a mortal visitor.

The great threat in the Dreamlands, both the travellers but also to te Dream itself, is of course Nightmare. Whether this is a philsophical force in the multiverse, whether it is a race intent on corrupting the Dream, or indeed whether it is the vestige of a dead god is unknown. But, just as the Dream takes a different form for all who experience it, so too does Nightmare form itself to the shape of the Dream, reflecting the terrors and insecurities of the individual Dreamer.

Campaign Theme: Lost Honour

Suddenly, I find myself building a new campaign (or, just perhaps, a one-shot). This all came about due to a Google search for strong themes, and on perusing the resulting list one leapt out at me: lost honour.

The idea, of course, is that the various campaign elements would be defined by their honour - either they're in the process of losing their honour, or they've deliberately thrown aside their honour, or they've defined honour badly, or they're persecuting the PCs for their own lost honour.

In terms of the PCs, the key would be that each player would be built with two requirements: the player needs to define how that character defines honour and how the character has lost that honour, and the character is required to care about that loss.

As noted, the character's definition of 'honour' can vary: one character may be, essentially, a Samurai who finds himself without a master (i.e. Ronin), and who bitterly feels that disgrace. Another might be a former soldier who, in a moment of weakness, turned tail and ran, leaving her unit to their deaths. A third might have been brought up with the notion that his purpose was to make a good marriage and sire an heir to the family name, only to discover that the wife his parents chose for him was a monster - he fled, but feels the loss of wealth and station that that decision results in. And so on, and so forth.

There are, of course, several ways the story can then resolve itself - the character could find a way to redeem their lost honour, the character could come to peace with the loss, the character could conclude that their definition of 'honour' was faulty, or whatever. Or, of course, the character's story could end without a proper resolution - either due to the collapse of the campaign, a plot that doesn't quite work out, or of course a premature death.

And now, I need a game to use, a setting, and some players...

Transitive Planes

"Transitive Planes" was a term used by the old D&D cosmology to describe the collection of planes that joined other planes. Originally, this consisted of the Ethereal and Astral planes only, with the Plane of Shadow/Shadowfell and Feywild being added to the list later.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the term, but there's nothing wrong with the concept - after all, something needs to join one plane to another. However, I'm also not absolutely sold on the set of transitive planes used by D&D - some of them are fine, some need a little tweak, and there's one I would like to add.

That being the case, here are the five transitive planes that I have in mind to use:

• Astral Sea: The biggest of the transitive planes, this is a timeless, airless void that links all the planes. Travel is reasonably easy, but almost nobody lives here. The major landmark in the Astral Sea, other than the permanent gates to the individual planes themselves, are the Dead Gods - the petrified remains of deities that once were and now are not.
• The Shadowfell: Yeah, that's a better name that "the plane of shadows". This is a darkened mirror of the world, full of entropy and decay. Not a nice place to visit, and even less nice to live, it is a haunt of necromancers and the undead.
• Wonderland: As in "Alice in...". This is the replacement for the Feywild, and is a wild and nonsensical place, albeit one with its own twisted logic (and a logic that cannot be denied - the rules may not make sense, but those are the rules and you must respect their authoritah). Wonderland is the home of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of the Fey, led by the White Queen and the Red Queen.
• The Land Beyond the Mirror: Beloved of seers and diviners, this is the realm that can be seen by those who stare too deeply into mirrors. Travel in the Lane Beyond the Mirror is dangerous, because it is a reflection of all those who venture there.
• The Great Web: Unique amongst the planes for being a creation of mortals, the Great Web is exactly what the name implies - a giant web of strands leading up, down, and sideways to any plane you choose to investigate. The main problem is that the Web is unmapped, and indeed defies all attempts to map it. The wise therefore venture there only after first plotting their journey. Though perhaps that is not the greatest problem - after all, does a web not imply spiders...?

It's worth noting that this structure does not allow any room for an Ethereal Plane. Instead, I'm going to take the view that being 'ethereal' is a condition that some creatures may possess, but that does not denote movement to any other plane.

Quiet Times

By my count, this is the fifth time in my gaming career when I've gone a significant length of time without gaming.

The first time was way back with my original group when, for reasons too stupid and embarrasing to recount, I had a falling out with the rest of the group. Fortunately, we gradually patched things up and got back to gaming, but it was a dull time in the meantime!

The second, and probably longest, of the fallow times was during my first year at university. This was caused by a combination of two things: my first group had finally split up and gone their separate ways, while I was too involved in my studies to seek out the Gaming Society on campus. This year was marked by quite a lot of reading of AD&D 2nd Edition books, as that edition was coming to the end of its life but I was yet to discover the joys of "Vampire: The Masquerade". In that year I also first became active in online communities, though only to a very minimal extent.

The third quiet time was during my last few months in Yeovil, when I was avoiding the local gaming scene. This was not a good time!

And then came the fourth time, was was a couple of years after I returned from Yeovil. The issue here was that I actually was involved in a game, in theory at least. Unfortunately, though, the group was small enough that our quorum amounted to 100% attendance, and was almost never available. Over time, it became apparent that the group was basically lost. And this, eventually, led to me starting up the Falkirk RPG Meetup, which has gradually expanded over time. So, that was good.

Of course, this latest quiet time is largely a result of a house move gone wrong - my most recent campaign ended in a TPK, and the expectation was that we would be moving imminently thereafter. Obiously, that is yet to happen, and it just hasn't quite made sense to start anything up in the meantime.

I now find myself contemplating the end of this fallow time - surely it can't go on much longer? And, that being the case, I wonder what shape the end of it will take. Will there be a new campaign? Indeed, does it make sense to start up a new campaign given the disappointment of the last couple? Alternately, should I focus on playing for a while, or run some one-shots to get back into the swing of things?

And one other thought: maybe I need to seek out a new game, or perhaps even a whole new style of game, for when I get back to things? Probably the most satisfying return to gaming I've enjoyed in the past was on returning to it was when joining the GUGS society at Glasgow - and my introduction to the aforementioned V:tM game. So, maybe it's time for something new?

Unlimited Agency?

I was pondering the upcoming "Star Trek" RPG yesterday, and in particularly I was considering just how many episodes in the various series feature a B-plot wherein one of the main cast falls in love with one of the guest stars. This is common enough, in fact, that it's something that probably should feature reasonably prominently in a ST RPG in order to better capture the entirety of the show.

And yet, the romantic B-plot is also something that almost invariably complicates the A-plot in some manner. This presents a difficulty for an RPG, since players are notoriously averse to causing problems for their characters - they want to win, understandably, and that's obviously much easier if they're able to tackle the A-plot undistracted.

In addition, of course, there's the thorny issue of imposing any sort of inner-life on the PCs - one of the underlying premises of RPGs is that you can basically have your character at least try whatever you have. This means, as a strong rule of thumb, that the GM really shouldn't restrict or impose on the player's agency when running their character.

(This even extends as far as domination effects and spells - these are amongst the most-hated things that can befall a character, and the advise is almost invariably to use these very sparingly. Indeed, I go so far as to leave the player in control of their character's actions while dominated, merely informing them of this fact and trusting them to play accordingly. Which, thus far, has worked reasonably well.)

Perhaps, though, it's worth considering whether that cow really is sacred - maybe it's permissible in some cases for the game to assign plot points to the characters, with a view to better fitting the genre? Indeed, games like "Firefly" seem to include the mechanisms needed for this sort of play, where the assigned subplot would become an ideal source of Complications (and therefore Plot Points) for the relevant PC.

And so, suddenly, I find myself quite interesting in seeing how, if at all, the "Star Trek" RPG handles that aspect of the game. And, if it does cover it well, that's one more reason for interesting the game as a whole.

More broadly, though, I now find myself considering whether, and to what extent, it is worth dropping that sort of subplot into a one-shot and/or campaign and leaving the players to drive the game forward from there. Or, indeed, is it perhaps better to just leave the whole thing to the players and let such things develop organically... or not at all?

Astral Miners in the Dead Gods' Graveyard

There's a classic AD&D adventure called "Dead Gods" that centres around the efforts of a dead god to return to life (hence the name). I've never played it, nor indeed read it, but the concept is pretty cool, and ripe for adaptation in other forms.

One of the underlying features of the adventure is that when a god dies, its remains somehow become petrified and become a hulk floating somewhere in the Astral Plane. Of course, such a hulk would have power associated with it.

In a previous post, I mentioned a campaign that I never quite got off the ground, centred around something called Cavcari's Last Invocation, which I did consider to be one of my better ideas - and which, in brief, states that anything that has a beginning must eventually have an end... including the gods themselves. Naturally, this ties in extremely well with the Dead Gods themes and ideas.

So, if we have these petrified remains of Dead Gods floating around in the Astral Sea, and if those hulks have inherent power, where might that lead? Who would have an interest in such a thing, who would be their agents, and how do the PCs get involved?

There's a campaign in there somewhere...

5e and "The Force Awakens"

Each time I re-watch it, I find myself less and less enamoured with "The Force Awakens" - the first time was a joy, the second time I started seeing some flaws, by the third I'd pinned down the arrival of Han Solo as the point where it starts to run out of steam, and now it's... well, it's still good, but it's basically "Star Wars Greatest Hits", and the originals are clearly better. (That said, there's no reason Episode VIII shouldn't be better.)

The reason I mention this here is that as time passes my impressions of 5e start to fall into the same mold - I was initially very impressed (with the finished product), but as time has gone on I've become less and less enamoured of it, and more and more convinced of the flaws.

But another similarity is that I'm inclined to think that a very large part of the positive reaction to both 5e and TFA is due to what they are not - TFA was a massive relief after the relative failure of the prequels, while 5e was likewise a massive relief after the negativity surrounding 4e. And, as such, many of the weaknesses and failings get a pass simply because they represent a step away from what has gone before.

Either that, or I'm just getting old and curmudgeonly.

But here's a question to finish on: I wonder when we'll see D&D's equivalent of "Rogue One"? Preferably complete with CGI recreations of Gygax and Arneson...

Back to that Star Wars game

Having considered the matter some more, I have decided that the Star Wars mini-campaign should probably be stripped down quite considerably - better to structure it as a one-shot, use pregen characters, and see how it goes. Then, if the game is a roaring success I can consider investing the resources in a full campaign, and if it fails to take off then I've not invested too much time and effort.

Additionally, I have concluded that the ruleset I will use is the Star Wars d6 Second Edition rulebook with no supplements, largely because that's the book that I actually own. If I do go for a full campaign, I'll probably want to 'upgrade' to something more recent and/or investigate sourcebooks, but for now it's better to stick with a manageable amount of reading and stick to physical books.

Finally, I've refined my concept for the game quite a bit - I'm now looking at a mash-up of "Unforgiven" with "Casablanca"... or, rather, a mash-up of my half-remembered versions of these.

The Things You Care About

One of the great unfulfilled promises of 5th Edition was the hope for a "modular game". Originally, this was sold as part of the "unify the editions" strategy, allowing players of all the different editions to come together around a common core, with 1st Ed players picking up a "classic module", 4e players picking up a "tactical combat module", and so on. It was never clear if the intention was for people to be able to play different 'editions' while at the same table, but it proved to be a moot point anyway since none of that meaningfully came to pass.

That said, I'm never sure that was a realistic aim anyway. I would have thought that a group that wanted to play 1st Ed would be better off just playing 1st Edition, and I suspect the "different games at the same table" would have been a nightmare.

However, one area where the modular design could have been really helpful would have been in allowing people to emphasise different bits of the game depending on what they individually care about. Of course, some of this has always existed, in that players who cared about having, say, a code of conduct could pick the Paladin class, while those who enjoyed magic could pick the Wizard, and so on. (And, of course, the use of supplements could allow the group to expand the game in some directions rather than others.)

And that worked to an extent... but only to an extent, because unfortunately there were almost invariably power imbalances between the options (Wizards beat Paladins in just about every edition of the game), and also because those expansions were generally done symmetrically - if the Fighter wanted a lovingly detailed weapon list and set of combat maneuvers, everyone was thereafter forced to use that same set.

But a modular design probably gives some scope to skipping that - if the Fighter wants the detailed weapons, maybe he could have access to those while everyone else just uses "hand weapon", "great weapon", etc. Meanwhile, the Wizard gets to use the detailed spell lists and components, while nobody else has to bother. And as long as everybody interfaces with the core system (used by the DM) in the same way, everything should remain fine.

Or not. Maybe it's a pipe dream.

But it does seem like something that would be worth investigating - rather than a 300-page core rulebook that's shared by everyone, where fully a third is spells that are of no use to lots of players while the weapon list is too detailed for some and not detailed enough for others, maybe it is indeed best to have a very thin core game, coupled with a set of modules (potentially associated with the classes), where the player picks up only those modules they care about, and ignore the rest.