Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
I was at Winter Vantasy/Fantasy these past few days. As I’ve mentioned, I go there to hang out with friends, not to game. I wound up playing two games. One was run by Mike.
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) February 5, 2022
That owlbear ass got me thinking about hybrid creatures, which led me to this video. It’s not … the best narrated video — it’s a bit annoying that one of the first things said contradicts the title of the video — but it’ll do.
I was going to post a video about Baalshamin, but the only ones I could find were depressing.
A Twitter conversation last week led me down a rabbit hole.
Dragons by far.
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) January 26, 2022
In case DoubleDM’s tweet is deleted, it asks, “So have you had more Dungeons or Dragons in your #DnD Games?” I responded, “Dragons by far.” Another person’s reply brought up the adventure, Horde of the Dragon Queen, for 5th Edition D&D (“5e“). This had me remembering Balasar Kimbatuul, one of my favorite D&D characters, known for invoking honor duels in Sly Flourish’s home game. For those who haven’t played it, the party faces a blue dragonborn, Lennithon, at the end of the first act. One PC has to face him, and there’s no chance the PC will win, even rolling all crits. It’s just impossible. At some point in the next act, the PCs meet Lennithon again, but are far better suited for the challenge. Despite Balasar insisting on an honor duel, he’s able to defeat Lennithon on his own, with his fellow PCs picking off Lennithon’s allies.
So, why bring this up? Because this segment of Horde of the Dragon Queen is essentially the plot of Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons.
Imagine these two with scaly skin. Or not.
In many of the cartoons, and in the live-action motion picture with Robin Williams, Popeye has two fights with Bluto/Brutus. The first one, he loses, and after some story and/or character development, Popeye exacts his revenge. While Popeye relies on spinach for that final push, PCs in Horde of the Dragon Queen rely on hit point and ability increases and the acquisition of better equipment that comes with leveling up.
Of course, this is a trope, so it’s not unique to Popeye. A scene in Only the Strong immediately popped into my head in which the protagonist claims that this time he isn’t playing around. This eventually gave the viewers (all three of us, I presume) the same result in the final, cheesy battle for supreme control over high school kids.
Winning a fight always comes down to what music is playing, right? Right?
There are other, better-known examples. Nevertheless, this is the first time I drew the connection, in part because I don’t recall ever seeing that before in a TTRPG story, and in other part because of the distance between those two scenes with Lennithon. With respect to the former, I’ve had characters meet a BBEG before their final fight, and sometimes on not-so-friendly terms, but I’ve never had a direct fight with one. I find it interesting that this isn’t a more common trope in D&D. It reinforces my belief that players are far too averse to losing a fight, and adventure writers write their adventures accordingly.
This week is Winter Vantasty/Fantasy, so I needed to come up with something for Mythology Monday that was D&D (or at least RPG) appropriate, but I’ve done a lot of that.
I searched for a photo of a sexy nerd, and this is what came up.
Before you purchase any used materials for Advanced, Basic, or Original D&D, please visit the Acaeum at https://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/rulebooks.html. Their main homepage is here, and their methodology is here. Someone posted a list of D&D materials to the Facebook 1st Edition D&D group earlier this week. The prices were generally double what the Acaeum lists.
Last printing of 1st Edition D&D PHB in fair condition only $300!
The guy wasn’t trying to be an asshole. He seemed like a reasonably nice guy, but his claimed success, if true, is relying on gullibility and desperation to make his sales. He may not realize that.
As rare as it is, I know there are some gamers that have a decent amount of disposable income. I, myself, have made several 1st Edition D&D purchases recently (though most were new). It doesn’t matter. If anyone is selling materials for higher prices than what’s listed at the Acaeum, don’t freaking buy them. Things cost whatever people will pay for them, but that’s exactly why you should rely on a neutral third party to assess the fair price. Otherwise, you encourage overpricing, and buyers suffer. Be patient. If everyone plays it cool, prices will lower.
I wish there was a resource for 3rd Edition D&D material. There are a couple of items I’d like, but they’re way too expensive at the moment.
A recent purchase sent me down a rabbit hole. Last Wednesday, I whined about my unfinished business with 4th Edition D&D (“4e“) with 3rd Edition D&D (“3e“). Yesterday, I showed how that can put you in a “you can never go back” position. Today, I’m not whining (too much), but this is really about praising a great RPG writer, Rob Schwalb, a.k.a., the Demon Lord, a.k.a., Satan Claus.
Full disclosure: Though we’ve never sat down and had a beer together (why the fuck not?), I know the guy, and I know that he’s done a lot of writing for D&D. However, I don’t pay attention to the authors on those books because I trust the brand and am going to buy those books regardless of who the freelance author was. I honestly had no idea he authored some of my favorite D&D books. Only the ones I consider my favorites are noted below, but the full list is here (or so claims Amazon.com).
Fiendish Codexes, 3e
As I’ve whined before, the Fiendish Codexes are two 3e sourcebooks I regret having sold off, and as much as I want them in my physical library, I’m not paying $135 or more for either. Rob co-wrote the second one, Tyrants of the Nine Hells, with Robin D. Laws. I’ll have to settle on the fact that my new character I’m playing at Winter Vantasy will be Tybalt the Cursed (Tyrants of the Nine Hells, page 79), or at least as close as I can get. Feel free to make suggestions to his character sheet at 1st level and 5th level.
Tome of Magic, 3e
Only one class can truly compete with bard for my favorite class: the Truenamer from Tome of Magic (for which I’m not paying $50+). I made one my BBEG for a campaign I ran but never played one as a PC. Mechanically, it’s not the best class. It has a weird power curve because it’s attacks are based on skills, so as you level up you became weaker until you hit 4th, 8th, 12th, etc. level where you get a huge jump in power. It also depends on a very specific set of magic items in order to keep up with the NPC power curve. Nevertheless, it has great flavor, so I’d have been happy to play one. I’ve annoyed people by playing bongos or a recorder at the game table for my bards, but can you imagine roleplaying a truenamer? I’d be screaming profanity in an unknown language every time I attacked.
Okay, maybe it’s best that I never played one.
Drow of the Underdark
Last week, I purchased a soft cover copy of Drow of the Underdark via the DMs Guild (PDF included). I loved that book and wanted it in my physical library. I’m very happy with my soft cover of the Fiend Folio for 1st Edition D&D, so the format doesn’t bother me at all.
Martial Power, 4e (the First One)
In 4e, all I wanted to play were leaders, which were the classes that did most of the healing. This is odd because I disliked playing healers in every other edition of D&D that I’ve played (though 5th Edition D&D‘s tempest cleric is reasonably fun). However, the one 4e non-leader class/build that I loved to play as much as a leader was the beastmaster ranger from Martial Power. I could win initiative and run across an entire battle map on the first turn. Impressive, though reckless. I did it only once. Once. But being able to self-flank with your beast companion was fun.
Monster Manual 3, 4e
My favorite enemies are demons, devils, drow, and slaadi. This book had cambions, 7 demons (molydeus!) 8 devils (using a picture of a Binder from Tome of Magic for 3e), 6 drow, Lolth, Eclavdra, and 2 slaadi. Lolth’s stat block was about as clever as they come, changing from a lurker to a brute when her lurker form was “killed.” Rob confirmed with me that he drafted it. (Sly Flourish‘s Cryonax stat block was pretty good too. Never used it. Shit.)
FYI, I'm writing a blog post and thought about this stat block. Google sent me to this tweet. With Lolth (MM3), this is one of my two favorite 4e stat blocks. It's not about the power for me; it's about how clever those stat blocks were drafted.
How could I not love this sourcebook? This is, of course, just scratching the surface. This sourcebook introduced a lot of iconic monsters to 4e. I added an intellect devourer to my home game as soon as I had that stat block.
Exemplars of Evil and Elder Evils, 3e
These were not among my favorites. I mention them only to say, yeah, it figures he wrote these. Crazy bastard.
This list is itself just scratching the surface. He’s done a lot of solid work, which is unsurprising. You don’t keep getting jobs if you’re producing shoddy work. Some of my favorite titles have his bloody fingerprints all over them.
I recently wrote about my unfinished business with 4th Edition D&D (“4e“). In short, the edition was (mostly) abandoned by WotC while there was still more of their material to explore. This was a problem only because most of my friends and I were the kind of people that would always move on to the current edition, so there’s no blame to assess. That’s just the way it is. Well, as I mentioned in that post, the same thing happened with 3rd Edition D&D (“3e“); it just wasn’t as devastating for me.
So, moving onto the topic at hand, I recently came across a 3e supplement I had forgotten but was a sore point for me: Dragon Magic. In WotC’s words,
This D&D supplement presents an unprecedented variety of new options for your character, each one drawing on some element of draconic might. It presents a new standard class, the dragonfire adept, who combines a potent breath weapon with various magical invocations. It reveals many new ways to wield the magic of dragons, including draconic auras, dragonpacts, and draconic racial variants.
For the DM, this book also provides dragon-themed adventure seeds and campaign ideas, magical locations to explore, and new options for making dragons more powerful and exciting.
I’ve always been a “kitchen sink” DM, by which I mean that I never forbade a player from using an official WotC resource for their D&D character. I didn’t care how it broke the game; I’d adjust. If they bought the book, they should be able to make use of it. I found it bizarre that WotC’s Living Greyhawk living campaign wasn’t so generous. They’re the ones that were trying to sell the book. Why forbid its use? But I digress. The point is that I bought Dragon Magic and really wanted to try the class it introduced, the dragonfire adept. I never got that opportunity, and the one time I tried, the DM forbade it because he wasn’t familiar with the material.
I have no idea whether it was a fun class. I have no idea whether the draconic subspecies, variant class features, draconic feats, draconic spells, dragon pacts, or draconic auras were any good. But I really wish I had had the opportunity to find out. To be clear, I’m being a whiny little bitch about this. It’s not enough that 4e, 5e, or any other game system created similar options. I wanted to play these options in 3e at that time, and I’m a little bitter I was denied that. As I’m not a fan of 3e, and the only times I’ve played it in recent years has been within the resurrected Living Greyhawk campaign, which forbids it, so this will never happen. That’s a shame.
All I wanted was to ride Falcor!
In other words, the real message of this post is: Don’t deny your players the opportunity to use the materials for which they’ve paid good money (i.e., don’t be a dick).
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Last week, I mentioned that, during my move, I found the hard copies of my Dungeon Delves from synDCon. Well, I also found some print issues of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. Any mechanics or setting-based discussed in the magazines is for 3rd Edition D&D (“3e“), which I no longer enjoy playing, but much of the material is system agnostic. It’s still good stuff.
As I’ve said in many other contexts, I left D&D in 1982 due to the Satanic Panic, dabbled a bit in the Star Trek RPG in high school and college, then finally returned to D&D and a small amount of other RPGs in 2005. Because of my age, my awareness, my family’s restrictions, and logistics, I didn’t subscribe to Dragon and Dungeon until 2005 or 2006. It was fantastic. As someone still trying to get a feel for writing and running my own gaming material, I loved the advice and rules explanations that magazine offered. Unfortunately, shortly after I started subscribing, the rug was pulled out. They announced that they were moving the magazines online, and shortly thereafter, 4th Edition D&D (“4e“) was announced at GenCon 2007. The last issues of each were dated for September, 2007.
I wasn’t a fan of the online magazines. I wanted to find a color magazine in my Delaware post office box twice a month, but the reality of our world took over, and I eventually started receiving them online with my DDO subscription. How much did I prefer print? I printed out several of the PDFs, but in black and white. It wasn’t the same, and the ink costs were too high despite not being in color, so that practice didn’t last.
I think this was the first online issue.
Because I appreciated Paizo for publishing them, I gave them a chance by continuing to subscribe to their Pathfinder adventure path books. I recall telling them that in response to their sales pitch they delivered via email.
You can buy these here, but they seem to have new covers.
Sadly (for Paizo), they weren’t for me, so I never used the material. Honestly, I always found their style of artwork better suited for children (especially the goblin), and, as I said above, I also knew that I wouldn’t be staying behind for 3e due to my participation in organized play. In hindsight, that wouldn’t have been a barrier due to the introduction of Pathfinder Society, but I would have abandoned Pathfinder anyway. I greatly prefer 4e, so I’m happy with my decision. Still, I’m happy Paizo enjoyed success, even though that success created a misconception as to how 4e fared, and that people were able to continuing playing an improved system they enjoyed.
My recent revisiting of 1st Edition D&D has me asking questions, and many people have pointed me to old editions of Polyhedron, Dragon, and Dungeon magazines. Apparently, these were a valuable resource long before I subscribed.
I’m old school, so I want those magazines, but I completely understand why I can’t have them.
Yesterday, I asserted that confirming critical hits was the worst rule in the history of D&D. Why? Well, this is how I imagine the rule came to be.
Designer 1: “Do you know who I really hate?” Designer 2: “Who?” Designer 1: “Players.” Designer 2: “Oh, no kidding. They’re the worst.” Designer 1: “Well, I have a new idea for a rule that will completely screw them.” Designer 2: “Ooooo, tell me! Tell me!” Designer 1: “So, if you roll an unmodified (aka ‘natural’) 20, it’s considered a ‘critical hit’ that does something really cool.” Designer 2: “Wait, how is that screwing them? You promised we’d be screwing them!” Designer 1: “Hold on; hold on. I’m not done. So, the player rolls a natural 20, which itself is relatively rare, but in that relatively rare instance when they do, this happens:
Player: “Hooray! I get to do something cool!” DM: “Um, no you don’t.” Player: “What? I rolled a natural 20. That’s a critical hit. I get to do something cool.” DM: “Um, no. Roll again.” Player: “Why?” DM: “Because if you want to do something cool, you have to earn it.” Player: “I thought I just did.” DM: “Yeah, that was good, but I need more. Roll again.” Player: “Okay. I guess so. . . . I got a 7.” DM: “Well, that misses, so your hit isn’t critical. Just roll normal damage and be happy I didn’t kill your character.” Player: <grumbles knowing that every 3rd Edition D&D DM will do the same thing, so there’s no way out>
Designer 2: “Holy crap! That’s maddening! Players will be soooo frustrated.” Designer 1: “And don’t forget, RPGs are balanced under the assumption that things like this will occasionally happen, so even when they get the critical hit, the mechanical benefit is illusory. This is just a way to dangle a carrot of being able to do cool things, then snatching it from them. It’s all about generating that frustration. Why? Because it’s what they deserve.” Designer 2: “You are a god of game design!” Designer 1:
Yet again, my move has uncovered some things that I haven’t laid my eyes upon in years. This time, I found a bunch of 4th Edition D&D (“4e“) material that I never used, and some I didn’t really use.
I know that 4e wasn’t for everyone. If it wasn’t for you, and you’re just a hater, then this post isn’t for you. Stop reading and go do what makes you happy. No one will give you shit for it.
When 4e ended, I knew what was coming. Everyone with whom I played D&D — and I mean everyone — would be moving onto 5th Edition (“5e“). Why? Because we were all people that met, directly or indirectly, through organized play. Therefore, we were all people who’d just move on to next edition without questioning it. We’d always have to be playing the current edition, whatever it was.
At the time 5e was announced, my friend, Erik, and I had a conversation. We were both of the mindset that 4e was ending too soon. (Erik would eventually be happy because he prefers 5e to 4e.) There was far too much material that we hadn’t yet used. Well, I was reminded of this as I unpacked a ton of 4e adventures and source books that I never used. Sure, I had seen some Shadar-Kai in Living Forgotten Realms, but I never played a Shadowfell campaign. I really wanted to make use of The Shadowfell supplement, either as a player or DM. That’s just one example. There are more than I could list here, especially when you consider the multitude of adventures.
But it’s not just 4e. Once 4e came out, I was so happy with it that I completely abandoned 3rd Edition (“3.0e” and “3.5e“). (Having to confirm critical hits is the dumbest rule in RPG history, so I was happy to see it go away.) As I’ve mentioned, I sold off all my 3.5e material because, as above, I knew that everyone with whom I played would move to 4e. This was a lot of material. I owned literally every sourcebook WotC published for 3.5e, a couple for 3.0e that were never upgraded to 3.5e, as well a ton of adventures (though not all that WotC had published). I also sold off a few 3rd-party products. The only things I kept were the three core books, the Spell Compendium, and Mongoose Publishing’s Pocket Player’s Handbook. I came to regret selling Deities & Demigods, Hordes of the Abyss, and Tyrants of the Nine Hells. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking (pun absolutely intended). Fortunately, Deities & Demigods was gifted to me later, but that’s not great for campaigns. I would really have liked to used Hordes of the Abyss, and Tyrants of the Nine Hells, but I’m not going to pay a minimum of $75 for Hordes or a minimum of $150 for Tyrants.
Of course, I’m capable of reading the material and adapting it to whatever edition I want to DM. Many of the monsters already exist across editions (though not 4e‘s uber-cool Immolith, except unofficially), but the cosmology and character options are very different. Crossing those streams has two disadvantages: 1) it’s more work; and 2) it subverts my players’ expectations for how the cosmology is currently structured. I wouldn’t know how to convert the Hellbred race from Tyrants of the Nine Hells to 1st Edition (“1e“), which is my current focus. Also, I want to start with the classic adventures first. Adapting adventures from other editions will happen later rather than sooner.
I’m not sure it’s in the cards, but there’s a lot of great legacy material out there that I wish I had used.
