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?