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.