Today, WotC announced that the D&D Miniatures game would not die after all. Instead, they’ve decided to hand it off to a handful of committed volunteers to develop stats for future minis releases and keep the skirmish/tournament scene going, with official license from WotC. 

The group granted the license is known as “The Guild” and is made up of some serious DDM fans, so it looks to be in good hands. The forum thread about The Guild already contains an impressive amount of work towards branding themselves. The coolest part? 

Tony Gullotti (Dagaron) of Indiana is point person on the design and production of a custom DDM Guild miniature. The miniature will be available by Gen Con. Polling the community resulted in a win for the Guild Master concept — a tribute to E. Gary Gygax.

I’m hoping I can get my hands on a EGG mini at next GenCon- that’d be awesome.

The Guild is also answering questions over at EN World, as well as some clarification by The Rouse. Overall, a very cool move on WotC’s part (and in fact, totally different than how Hasbro handles its board game library- they hold onto the license as long as they can, even if they don’t plan on publishing it).

Additionally, it also looks like we’ll see the Invoker class, now almost confirmed to be a new class making its first appearance in Player’s Handbook 2. Is there some thematic link between it and the Druid? Since Primal powers are called Evocations, will the Invoker Evoke, harkening back to the Invocation/Evocation school of 2e? We’ll find out soon enough!

Presumably, we’ll see some new magic items with the Adventurer’s Vault 2 playtest. Unless they feature some brand new awesome mechanic, this will largely just be more magic items to use. I could be wrong, and we’ll see brand new rules for skateboards or something, but new magic items is a best guess.

Finally, the one that actually has me the most excited: Mercykillers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, that’s the name of one of the factions from Planescape, which happens to be my all time favorite D&D published campaign setting. Since it’s marked as a playtest and not just an article, this implies it is a preview of published material to come. My first guess is that this is a paragon path, and it’s a playtest for some kind of player equivalent to Manual of the Planes (possibly: Player’s Guide to the Planes) that will include faction goodness. Of course, my bigger hope is that it’s playtesting for a full blown Planescape campaign setting for 4e, and that you can select a faction just like you can select a backgrond in Forgotten Realms.

One final note: I believe all signs are pointing to a lack of Monks in Player’s Handbook 2. That leads me to believe it’ll be a while before our high-kicking friends make it into core 4e. Fortunately, there are many good alternatives in the meantime.

Except…

The feat selection sucked. Keep in mind this was the early days of d20- even the designers (the book was co-written by Monte Cook) didn’t have as much experience with the ins and outs of the d20 system as they would in years to come. Thus, the feat chapter was lifted almost directly out of the D&D Player’s Handbook, and featured primarily combat feats, with a few new psychic feats thrown in. So every 3 levels, the characters in my d20 CoC game got to pick stuff like Power Attack, despite the fact they never wanted to be in melee.

That game concluded years ago, but the problem stuck with me. That’s why I was eager to get my hands on Shadows of Cthulhu, a new supplement for the d20(ish) system True20. Shadows of Cthulhu adds in all the character stuff to True20 that lets it feel like a Cthulhu RPG. Plenty of backgrounds for Investigators (including some unusual ones, like having a not quite pure bloodline…), additional options, and feats. Just the Benefit feat alone, which lets you gain different social benefits, adds a huge amount to playing an Investigator. And of course, what Cthulhu game would be complete with out Sanity checks? Here, it’s more like a Sanity save, but the idea is still there.

The biggest benefit is the use of True20, which for those who don’t know, is something of a streamlined version of 3.5 era d20, designed as a generic base system not tied to a genre. The classes are purposely generic enough to encompass a variety of concepts (with more showing up in Shadows of Cthulhu). It tosses out a bunch of the D&D-legacy rules to form a better generic and easier to play core system. At its heart, however, it’s still d20. While there will still be a learning curve, it’ll be much easier to explain how to play then switching to an entirely new system. There’s just some automatic familiarity among roleplayers when they see Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha on a sheet.

So when I decide to give 4e D&D a rest for a bit, or even if I just want to run a one-shot (I never finished running my d20 version of Kringle in Time, after all), I’ll probably give Shadows of Cthulhu a whirl- possibly grafting on some of the clue mechanics from Trail of Cthulhu on for good measure. There’s never been a better time to drive your players insane.

Want to learn more about Shadows of Cthulhu? Read on…

• SoC Preview: Click to Download
• Atomic Array: Episode 010: Shadows of Cthulhu
• RPGAgression: The Rudis Review
• RPG Blog II: Roaring 20s Cthulhu: The Silver Screen
• Mad Brew Labs: Tidings of Thule
• The Geniuses: So Many Ways to Cthulhu
• Yog-Sothoth: Shadows of Cthulhu: A Review
• Fear the Boot: Shadows of Cthulhu

Drop by RPG Now to pick up your copy today!

In-depth: 159 pages, hard cover, full-color, $29.95 retail.

The new class builds for Fighter and Ranger are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Fighters get Tempest (two-weapon fighter) and Battlerager (kinda like a Barbarian, gets a lot of temp HP). They both get powers to support the builds, plus powers for any fighter to take.

Rangers get Beastmaster, which focuses on teamwork with an animal companion of your choosing. There are 8 kinds of animals to choose from, with a note saying that you should feel free to change the type of animal and just use its stats, a common 4e method. I have to say, this is the first time in all my years of playing D&D that I want to play a “pet-focused” character. Of course, they also get a full set of powers to bolster your Beastmastery, but like the other two Ranger builds, you can take other powers as well.

Unfortunately, the Rogues and Warlords didn’t come away with as much cool stuff. Rogues get a new build focusing on blunt weapons, and more use of a keyword called “Rattling.” Rattling provides a minor effect, but does not count as a new status effect… so it’s annoying to track, and doesn’t fit in with other similar conditions. It also doesn’t appear in each powers’ description. They do get plenty of new powers, and their new paragon paths are probably the biggest boost in the book.

Warlords get two more builds as well, though they aren’t as “game-changing” as the builds other classes get. Resourceful and Bravura both give new effects when an ally spends an action point, and powers to go along with those builds. Sadly, still no love for the ranged warlord. Like Rogues, their biggest boost is in the new paragon paths.

Powers: In general, you know what to expect now with 4e powers. Some interesting new styles of powers are present, however. There are a few at-will utilities, an ideal choice for power-swapping multiclassers. There are quite a few “gambling” powers that let enemies do one thing so you can do something better. Then there are also a number of powers that require you to be a certain race to use them. Finally, it seems like a number of powers are attempting to provide more options for certain concepts: there are now many more shield-based powers, as well as powers for various weapons.

Paragon Paths: The four classes get twelve paragon paths each, though there is overlap in who can take them, expanding the options even wider. There are also race and class specific paragon paths, including ones for the Drow and Genasi from the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide. It also looks like each paragon path was given much more flavor text than before, referencing legends and famous heroes (new to this book.)

Feats: New feats are available for every tier. They mainly focus on giving more options to specific builds, specific races, or both. The racial ones tie heavily into each race’s core ability: for example, the Eladrin feats mainly rely on teleporting. Given that feats are one of the areas that the Player’s Handbook has a distinct lack of, it’s good to see more available.

Additionally, there are more multiclassing feats, both that can be taken in place of the initial multiclass feat for each of the martial classes, but also more options for multiclass feats when doing paragon multiclassing. Unfortunately, these probably still do not go far enough to address some of the concerns about multiclassing, but they are a welcome addition nonetheless.

Epic Destines: The book ends with 10 epic destinies. They range in scope from fairly mundane sounding (Beastlord) to the truly epic (Godhunter). Epic destines still remind me of the Immortals Handbook rules of old, which I’m quite fond of.

Conclusion: The big selling points, as I stated up front, are the new options for Fighter and Rangers, but it also contains worthwhile additions for all the martial characters. And that’s all this book has: more options for martial characters. It succeeds wildly at that goal, being chock full of new powers, feats, and so on. There’s also nothing that stands out at me as absolutely broken in the book, which makes me feel a bit better about overall power creep- yes, more options does almost always lead to some form of power creep, but so far I’ve yet to see anything that’s on the level of, say, Vow of Poverty.

Sidebars also contain more background/setting/story/fluff (whatever you want to call it) than we see in the core books, giving suggestions for different class/race combinations and more. It, however, does not contain anything that you might have become used to in 3e-era classbooks: no multi-page write up on a Fighter’s Guild or whatever. It is just packed full of rules content from start to finish. It’s certainly not a book I’m going to read from cover to cover. But for introducing new options, without overshadowing the existing ones, it’s a great book that makes me look forward to others in the series, and definitely strikes me as a successor to Complete Warrior, and much better than Sword & Fist.

With that in mind, and with a request from Asmor, I began putting together some new Encounter group templates that can be used to expedite your game planning and hopefully present your players with some new experiences and challenges. I’ve also listed some suggestions and brainstorming for how these groups could be implemented, and I would love to hear any you’ve come up with as well!

I looked first to my personal favorite monster role to feature in its own Encounter Group: the Lurker!  I feel like they get very little love in the DMG Encounter groups as they only show up in the harder Double Line groups, so I very badly wanted to do them the justice they deserve.

Assassination Squad

Easy:

• 2 troops (soldier/brute) of level n-3
• 2 skirmishers of level n-3
• 1 lurkers of level n

Standard:

• Elite (soldier/brute) of level n-2
• 3 skirmishers of level n-3
• 2 lurkers of level n+1

Hard:

• Elite (soldier/brute/controller) of level n
• 4 skirmishers of level n-1
• 2 lurkers of level n+3

The Assassination Squad is meant to highlight the best Lurker monsters that skulk in the shadows and pick off party members one at a time.  One large, tough muscle is used to absorb damage while a group of quick skirmishers move about and create distractions so that the lurking monsters can strike with maximum effectiveness and surprise.  The squad is set up to be very mobile for infiltration and surprise attacks.  These encounters should typically include lurkers such as assassins or stranglers who will be the highest level monsters in the fight.  In most cases all of the monsters should be set up in a way that they are ambushing or surprising the party at the same time, if the lurkers are caught off guard or on their own then the encounter might be over too quickly.

Next I noticed that minions were pretty well left out of the fold in the assumption that you could substitute in 4 of them for any one monster of the same level in any of the encounters; however, I think they could also benefit quite nicely from having their own custom groupings.

Tough Gang

Easy:

• Brute/soldier of level n+2
• 12 minions of level n-2

Standard:

• 2 brutes/soldiers of level n+3
• 8 minions of level n

Hard:

• 2 brutes/soldiers of level n+4
• 12 minions of level n+1
• 1 artillery/controller of level n+1

The Tough Gang is meant to represent a truly tough boss character, someone with such a personality that they have attracted their own mob of minions to through around or protect them but really exerts little control over their posse and has minimal leadership skills.  Essentially this splits the party sharply between focus fire and crowd control, if either one is too weak then one aspect of the encounter will be tougher for the party to handle.  For the hard encounters an artillery or controller is around to really add some real chaos to the melee.  An example of this type of group is a particularly strong and tough Bugbear who has acquired an entourage of puny goblins that he pays little mind to.  Instead of leading the group and working as a team, the Bugbear is prone to stepping on his allies or picking them up and using them as melee/close range weapons and in return the goblins try their best to flock around the Bugbear and be close to him, preventing him from ever being fully effective in close quarters combat.

For the last Encounter template I am presenting here, I wanted to use an idea that comes up in every party I’ve ever played with and present it from a monster’s perspective as well.  When an ally is in the fray, do you still throw that fireball?  The answer here is, Yes!

Assumed Casualties

Easy:

• Controller of level n-2
• 5 brutes of level n-3
• 4 minions of level n-3

Standard:

• 2 controllers of level n-1
• 5 brutes of level n-2
• 4 minions of level n-1

Hard:

• 3 controllers of level n+1
• 5 brutes of level n
• 4 minions of level n

Assumed casualties is what these monsters go into combat with, the key controllers sit back and lay down areas of effect without care or worry for their allies well being.  Hanging out in such a group, some of the monsters have become quite tough, representing the brutes while others don’t last so long either hacked down by heroes or taken out as collateral damage from the same controllers that have led them into battle.  If you tally the xp totals for this template you will find them about one monster over what they should be, as it should be implemented in a manner that the controllers do enough damage to their own side to negate this offset.  Besides, no matter what happens those minions aren’t going to last for very long!  A perfect example for this would be the classic evil wizard and his ogre bodyguards, who cares if they live or come out of it partially roasted as long as his enemies are fried along with them?

This also allows the DM to spring a little surprise on the party when they assume they are safer from the wizard raining death when his bodyguards are nearby.  They’re brutes, afterall, they’re designed to take damage!  You could easily reverse this encounter scenario by switching the brutes to soldiers, thus making it into a group that works well together as the bodyguards are armored and suited to withstanding whatever their master throws at them, or even for particular nasties choose mobs that are resistant (not invulnerable) to the kind of damage that the controllers are throwing around.

These are the first three Encounter Groups I’ve come up with, and I think they serve to fill out a percieved absence in the DMG encounters which should give DM’s a bit more diversity while planning their games.  If Asmor likes these enough hopefully he’ll add the into his 4th Edition Encounter Planner, and I certainly hope that some of you find these useful as well, feel free to let me know what you think and offer up suggestions for changes, edits, or additions!

Everything I’ve heard has made me excited for this movie, and the trailer only moreso. What do you guys think?

TheMainEvent ran this gem of a story by me: 

Ridley Scott, who has been attached as a producer on “Monopoly” and has been mentioned as a possible director, is now officially attached to helm the project, with an eye toward giving it a futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic “Blade Runner.”

Which naturally lead the two of us (both aspiring screen writers) to begin pitching ideas back and forth:

 

 ”Accused of a crime he didn’t commit…” “Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200″

(Fat Cat CEO dressed up like monopoly man laughs)

 “A victim of a beauacracy gone mad…” “What do you mean, my 4 houses have been replaced by a hotel?”

“Pushed to the brink…” “Why do I have to pay so much money just for visiting the boardwalk?”

 “His only option left…” “My only option now is to establish: A MONOPOLY“

In the rain, our hero on his knees: “MOOOOONNNOOOOPPPPOOOLLLLLYYYYY!!!!!”

 

When starting a new campaign (or even just planning a one-shot), it’s tough to get people into a new game. Thus, the game usually ends up being D&D. Now, there’s nothing wrong with it being D&D, but with so many RPGs out there, I enjoy a bit of variety when I can get it.

Why is it so tough? Because the “buy-in” total for the game is too high.

What do I mean by that? The buy-in is anything that has to be contributed by the players (and GM) in order to make the game function. While buying the game itself and any accessories is one form of buy-in, that’s generally not the problem. The problem is how much has to be learned in order to play a new RPG.

This can generally be divided up into two kinds of buy-ins: mechanics and setting (or if you prefer, crunch and fluff.) To expand a bit, let’s use an example. Say I want to run a game of Dark Heresy. In order to have a satisfying game experience, the players need to learn how to play the game. They need to know both how to create a character and how to play, and will be frustrated if they don’t. (The more complicated the game, the longer this process takes.) In addition, I need to convey to them all the setting details of Dark Heresy. This could mean just telling them what kind of characters they can play and what their job will be, or could go as far as having to explain the entire Warhammer 40K universe to them. When running the game, I don’t want to have to stop every few minutes to explain everything: I’d much rather be able to just say “Disciples of Nurgle have infected the toilets of Hiveworld P247 and a joint force of Ultramarines and Eldar are on their way to battle Tyranids on the other side of the planet” and have that actually mean something.

Even D&D can have this problem. I’ve yet to run a game of Forgotten Realms or Eberron, despite being interested in those settings, because I know they come with all kinds of baggage that the players will have to buy-in to in order to get the most out of it. Leaving aside published settings, there’s always going to be a buy-in required to understand whatever world I’m running, which is why I tend to lean towards “exploration” games, where the PCs begin with very little knowledge and then learn more and more about the world as they play, both in and out of game.

Of course, different RPGs have different levels of buy-in necessary. A White Wolf game, with its emphasis on the various factions, is going to have a higher story buy-in, but the rules are generally pretty portable between them. Some games are going to have more complicated mechanics: joshx0rfz ran a campaign of Iron Heroes, which despite being largely d20 based, still had enough differences to throw off the players and cause slowdowns in the game.

This all is especially a problem in convention games, which is often an ideal location to try out new RPGs. New players have to learn the rules, setting, and scenario in a very limited timeframe. It’s often just easier to play something you already know, unless you are sure you’ll have an awesome teacher, or the game is structured as such to allow easy access. Those are two ways to get around buy-in issues, but there are others.

RPGs from licensed properties usually have the advantage when it comes to story/setting buy-in. When I sit down to play Star Wars- in any system- I have a pretty good idea what to expect. While I may have to find out what era we’re playing in and lookup what a Trandoshan is, much of the work is done for me.

The same was true for the Wheel of Time game I played in. However, that game had another advantage: it was the d20 system, and didn’t stray all that far from the basic d20 setup. Thus, I was up and running rules-wise very quickly in that game, allowing most of my energy to go into playing my character, and the DM’s to practice his Illian accent.

That’s one of the many reasons D&D tends to get chosen as the current game so often. Since D&D got there first, most of the players are familiar with at least the basic concepts of how to play and what the setting is like (no matter the edition) to mostly dive right in. I myself am very fond of d20 Modern for similar reasons: the rules are similar to what I already know, and there’s almost no setting buy-in whatsoever: it takes place in today.

Still, I find myself yearning to play other games, which is why I find myself fascinated with games like Dread. The rules buy-in takes a grand total of two sentences, and I can use whatever kind of setting I want. Dread looks to be the kind of game that I can play with just about anyone, which I certainly can’t say for most RPGs. Of course, there’s always going to be this push and pull between a game with enough options to satisfy players and keeping it simple enough to understand easily, so a rules-lite system like Dread may not always be the answer.

I don’t think there’s a good, one-size-fits-all solution. In my situation, it’s likely to stay the same for a while: either I’m running D&D (or very similar game), or I’m running something extremely simple like Dread. I welcome any comments about the idea, and how you’ve tackled the buy-in issue in your games.

Well, sure enough, only a couple of days later and he’s sent me a link to his new 4th Edition Encounter Planner, which does pretty much exactly what I wanted it to!  I haven’t gotten to use it to maximum effectiveness yet in my game, but I will be for future encounters that I want to design using the DMG templates, and it will definitely be a time-saver.  Thanks to Asmor for creating it, and hopefully some of you enjoy it as well!

You can see a full list of the scripts and programs he has created over at his site.  Also don’t forget to check out his great site, Encounter-A-Day!

The plan is to adapt one novel each season, starting with 1996’s “A Game of Thrones.” - AintitCool

Martin himself will be doing some of the writing chores (further pushing back Dance of Dragons, eh?) along with others.  Frankly, I’m really excited.  After seeing Rome/Deadwood I have faith in HBO doing a multitude of eras… so the medieval War of the Rose inspired Game of Thrones should be no problem.  Moreover, the lengthy treatment of each book really ought to do the series justice.  Finally, the complexity of the books translates well to HBO as series such as The Wire and The Sopranos have found success whilst juggling a cast of characters comparable to the immensity of Martin’s works.

Installation takes a while, especially on the step to update the .net framework to its current version- a period of about 15 minutes where there’s no indication that anything is happening. A reboot is required, but other than those two things, it went pretty smoothly.

Launching the app takes a little bit, which I’m presuming is when it connects to the Internet to get current data. I expected to have to sign-in to my D&D Insider account, but that did not happen at any step.

For the purposes of the test, I began inputting my Eladrin Wizard/Warlock (who I based on a certain popular character.) The first step was to choose my race. The selection includes all the PHB races, monster manual races (with some replaced with their Dragon updates), and Forgotten Realm races.

After pushing “Choose Race” and then pressing “Next Step”, I was on to choosing my class. This is how most of the generator works: selecting by pressing the “choose” button, then the “Next Step” button lights up when done, and takes me along to whatever I need next.

I select Wizard, and then I am presented with class-specific choices: in this case, which Implement to use. I pick Wand, and move on. (You can also choose a quick build.)

Next is the Background Choice, which applies if you’re in Forgotten Realms or Scales of War. I am neither, so I move past this optional step.

Next comes ability score choices. All the standard options you’d want are there, except for adjusting the amount of points you start with (in case you have an overly friendly or mean DM.)

Training Skills is next. I select my skills, and it reminds me to train my bonus skill for being Eladrin.

Next step is choosing feats, which automatically displays the ones I qualify for. I select “Pact Initiate” for my multiclass warlock. After selecting it, I then am taken back to the class menu to select my choice of Pacts (Fey) and then my choice of free skills (Theivery.) The “Next Step” button takes me to each of these choices in turn, and then back on track.

Power choice comes next, walking me through each selection of at-will, encounter, and daily powers (including selecting an extra daily for being a Wizard.)

The equipment list tells you what items you can use, and it lets you add any items without spending money. Turning on “shopping mode” manages your gold, and tells you what you can and cannot afford.

As a wizard, I have my choice of rituals. Since the program includes data from Adventurer’s Vault, alchemical rituals are there as well. 

Finally, you can fill in all the details, like your name, alignment, etc. You can also attach a character portrait, which I happen to have, courtesy of Greywulf’s mad rendering skills.

All the details filled in, I can save my character, and look at the character sheet.

The character sheet has all the details you’d want. The best part, however, are the power cards that have all the details filled in for you, including Second Wind and Action Point usage. I was then able to print it to my Adobe PDF maker. It took me a few tries to realize that each page pops up with a separate print dialogue, which means I had to name each a different file and then combine them in Acrobat. Not a big deal for me, but it would be nice when printing to not have to confirm it for each page.

The resulting sheet is here: Istarya’s Character Sheet

But wait! I’ve been playing in Bartoneus’s campaign since June, and Istarya is now level 4. He also has some magic items that he’s gained on his journey. So let’s level him up.

Ah, damn, the Beta version only supports up to Level 3. That’s annoying. I still make him Level 3 and add his items. Leveling is easy: it tells you what needs to be done, and walks you through it.

Here’s the final product: Istarya Level 3

As you can see, my magic items’ daily powers have been added to the power card list.

And that’s the character generator. It’ll be a boon for those just starting out, but as someone involved in an ongoing campaign, it’s not as useful as I was hoping right off the bat. Still, I already have high hopes for it, and I’m already more impressed with it than I was with e-tools.