Why I Don't Care About D&D Next Anymore

On January 9, 2012, Wizards of the Coast announced it was working on the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Public playtesting began on May 24th of that same year and like many gamers, I eagerly signed the non-disclosure agreement and downloaded the playtest packet. While I didn't see anything groundbreaking, I felt the basic system was interesting enough that I decided to keep giving each future playtest packets a look. However, I recently noticed something as I was looking through the most recent playtest packet.

I really don't care about D&D Next that much.

While there are a handful of interesting elements present in D&D Next, like the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic and Finesse weapons, but I have yet to see anything that would actually make me set Pathfinder and the other editions of D&D aside for this new game.

Secondly, the "design by committee" process has started to turn the game into this weird, Frankenstein system   that become less appealing each time I look at it. It seems like they are trying to please everyone, which in turn will turn off a lot of people. I think I would have preferred if they would have just made the game and let us playtest it, then used the comments that were not just people yelling, "THAT'S NOT D&D!" to refine the system instead of creating new subsytems in an attempt to please everyone.

Now, I will probably give the next few playtest packets a glance out of pure curiosity and to see if there are any other elements that I can steal for the other games that I run or play. However, I doubt I'll actually sit down and run the game as it is again. I just don't care enough about D&D Next to do that anymore.

Setting Idea: A Primal World

One of the most enjoyable things about being a Game Master is creating new settings for your games. While I generally use published settings because it saves me some time and allows me to focus more on the adventure and the players' characters, I still like to brainstorm new ideas and concepts for settings that I can possibly flesh out for a future campaign.

Recently, I've started writing down some of these setting ideas in a spiral notebook I had laying around just so I won't forget them. I thought it would be fun to take some of those concepts and explore them a little further. So, I thought I'd start with the first concept I wrote down in the notebook: A Primal World. 

The idea is rather simple actually. The world is a new one, the deities having just created it. There is only one, Pangaea-like continent covered by thick forests and jungles. The small number of sentient races that inhabit this landmass have just started to form numerous tribes for protection and to make survival easier. 

I have always found the idea of a fantasy campaign set in a primal world to be rather interesting. The majority of fantasy settings are set after the "Golden Ages" where all of these legends and world-shaping events have happened. Setting a game in a world where those things have yet to happen would allow the players to actually do those things themselves. There characters could be those legendary heroes that inspire generations to come. They could be the characters who establish the first great empire and could be there to witness the great cataclysm that creates the different continents. 

Another interesting element of a primal world is that some of the tropes and elements common in most fantasy settings might not exist yet. For example, most of the weapons and armor being used are probably made from bones, hide, leather, and stones instead of iron and steel. Magic might be more wild and chaotic, making it a lot more dangerous and less-reliable than normal fantasy settings. Also, the number of deities would be smaller as well. The gods would be incredibly powerful with broader portfolios. The more specific gods would come over time and some of the player characters might become deities themselves. If you're using a game system that has classes, the number of classes might be limited. Paladins, monks, magi, and other such classes might have not been developed yet in the setting. However, you could introduce them overtime, letting the players become the first of those classes. 

I could see most of the adventures and campaigns would be about exploration and survival. There really wouldn't be any "traditional" dungeons yet since the civilizations that will leave them have just started to develop. The players' characters could be exploring to help their tribe's villages to further expand or to track down a threat to their tribes and take it out. You can also have them working to bring different tribes together under one banner to make them stronger and defend them better. This could allow some interesting intrigue and culture-clashes to show up as well. 

What do you guys think about setting a campaign in a primal world? Would you ever do it? If so, how would you do it? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas. 

Musing About Health Systems

Wednesday's post on the Shaken rules in Savage Worlds got me thinking about health systems in games. I've been thinking about how certain systems, like D&D/Pathfinder's Hit Points, abstract damage to make things easier and how other games go for a more realistic damage system to represent how taking a hit would actually affect a character.

For awhile now, I've been toying with a post-apocalyptic game. Instead of going the more "gonzo" route of Gamma World, I wanted to make a game that was more gritty and lethal. I want it to be a game where combat is the last option because when two people pull out guns, one of them is going to die quickly and the other will probably die slowly and painfully of an infected wound.

So, I've been trying to figure out a way to handle this kind of damage without making the system extremely complex. However, that's easier said then done. I was thinking maybe it there could be three types of wounds (like major, minor, and moderate) that vary in deadliness. A character could take a certain amount of each wound before becoming incapacitated or die. However, determining what deals what kind of wound and if the location of the hit should effect the severity of the wound has made things difficult.

Really, this is just me thinking out loud. Maybe I'm trying to do something that just can't be done. However, I always like a challenge and some help would be much appreciated. If anyone has any ideas on how I could handle this and make it work, I'd love to here them.

Savage Wounds

Art by Steven Belledin

Ever since I discovered it about two years ago, Savage Worlds has quickly become one of my favorite 'generic' systems. Its very simple to learn and understand, it can easily be house ruled tweeked to run pretty much any genre of game you'd like, and the game play is both fast and fun.

With that being said, Savage Worlds is not a flawless system. Like all roleplaying games, Savage Worlds has its own set of quirks and rules that can cause potential problems while playing and running the game. For me, one of those rules is the Shaken mechanic.

For those of you not familiar with Savage Worlds, Shaken is a condition that a character receives when an attack hits them and the attack's damage is greater than the character's Toughness score (as the name implies, it is a measure of how tough a character is). Like most conditions, Shaken has a number of negative effects. First, Shaken characters may only move up to half their normal speed and can perform no other actions (including running). Secondly, a Shaken character who is hit by another attack whose damage is greater than their Toughness receives a wound. Once they suffer four wounds, they are incapacitated.

While a player can make a Spirits check to remove the Shaken condition from their character, they will have to sacrifice their turn to do so (unless they roll the maximum result for their die, getting a raise and allowing them to act immediately) and there is a good chance they are just going to become Shaken again. Basically, it's a vicious cycle that's hard to get out of once your inside it.

I'm going to be perfectly blunt with this. Shaken is easily one of the most irritating mechanics that I have ever seen. I get why the designers placed it there. It's supposed to act as a buffer for Wild Card characters and allow them some extra staying power. However, in my experience running and playing Savage Worlds, Shaken is incredibly annoying and makes the game less fun.

So, I have two options: house rule Shaken so its not as irritating or remove it from the game entirely. If I were to house rule it, I'd probably say you can either move at half your Pace or you can perform an action and suffer a -2 penalty to it. You can do both, but the penalty increases to -4.

If I were to remove Shaken from the game (which I'm kind of leaning towards), I would probably just increase the number of wounds a character can take before being incapacitated. The number of wounds would be determined by the following formula: 2 + 1/2 the character's Vigor die. So, if a character had a d8 in Vigor, they could take 6 wounds before they are knocked out of the fight. Also, I'd probably spread the penalties out a little or place a cap on how far they can stack.

Well, looks like I have a decision to make.

New Dungeons & Dragons Movie: What I'd Like to See

Last week, Warner Bros. made the announcement they had obtained the rights to make the next Dungeons & Dragons franchise and are planning to make a new movie. They've hired the writer of Wrath of the Titans (which currently has a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) to re-write an existing screenplay for a movie that was supposed to be based on Chainmail. Also for some unknown reasons, they decided to bring Courtney Solomon (the director of the 1st Dungeons & Dragons movie) on as a producer.

While I think this upcoming movie is most likely going to be bad, there is an incredibly tiny part of me that does hope a miracle happens and we finally get the D&D movie we've been waiting decades for. So, I decided to embrace that small part of me for this post and talk about what I'd like to see from this new movie.

First, I want this movie to represent the basic concepts of D&D. The characters should be made up of the four classic races and classes (dwarf, elf, halfling, & human; cleric, fighter, rogue, & wizard). The movie should embrace the sword & sorcery elements of D&D and make it a fun, adventure film instead of a Lord of the Rings knock-off. It would be pretty cool if they set the movie within Greyhawk (or at least the Free City of Greyhawk), but it isn't a requirement. Finally, the movie should have a plot that feels like something that would show up in a D&D adventure.

I don't have a lot of expectations for this upcoming movie. It would be nice if they could get the basics right and add the elements I mentioned above, but I'm not going to be holding my breath. I guess I'm just too much of a cynic.

Short Hiatus

As the name of this post implies, I'm going to be taking a short hiatus from the blog this week. This is mainly to let my creative juices rest and prevent a burnout from the blog. Also, I'm most likely going to be busy this week with real life things and won't have the time to do the normal, thought-out posts anyway.

So, see you next week dear readers!

Torchbearer Kickstarter

Torchbearer, for those of you who don't know, is a fantasy roleplaying game based on the 2008 game Mouse Guard (which itself is a simplified version of Burning Wheel). The Kickstarter for the game calls is a dungeon crawl game that is a love letter to Basic D&D. While I'm not the biggest fan of Burning Wheel (I find it too crunchy for my tastes), I REALLY like Mouse Guard and want to see what an "Advanced Mouse Guard" game will look like. 

The Kickstarter has 27 days to go and it has already raised $29,431 (over double its $14,700 goal). While this project will definitely be funded, it's never a bad idea to throw your own money into the pot just to get some of pledge awards. Also, if you're like me and curious to see what they're doing with the game, you have an extra incentive to chip in.