Tag: rpg

Twitter-Inspired Thoughts, Part II: 5th Edition D&D Is Accessible. So What? @newbiedm @Dm_LSP @MerricB @Pablodnd @DarkplaneDM @LeslieGMgrrl @ChattyDM #DnD #5e

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Last Saturday, I tweeted the following.

All of those discussions were inspired by or involved NewbieDM, S Keldor lord of Castle Greyskull DMLSP (that’s a mouthful), Roving Band of Misfits, and Merric Blackman. I can say that NewbieDM and Merric are good at doing that; I’ve never interacted with S Keldor. Note that while I’ll be quoting them in these posts, much like my brain at 3 am acknowledged about me, I can’t do their arguments justice either. You’ll have to click through to see everything they’ve said. My only purpose here is to express my own opinions while providing context for their genesis and giving credit to those that inspired them. If you want to know what they think, click through and ask them to clarify.

To keep my posts short, each issue will be dealt with in its own post, all with this same introduction. | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV |Part V |

Part #2: 5th Edition D&D Is Accessible. So What?

This one starts with NewbieDM.

Notice my comment: 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons is accessible. In our community, that means there’s a low bar to entry, so I was saying that picking up 5th Edition is easy for new players. I’m not alone in my view.
This is certainly going to be shorter than yesterday’s post, because that’s my entire point.

We all understand why it’s important for a game to be accessible: You can’t sell books to new or casual players if the game is too complex. People want instant (or at least quick) gratification from their games. If they’re always being run over by the hardcore gamers that study the game as if it was their full-time job, then the game’s community will inevitably consist of only hardcore gamers. Game designers need to keep that big picture in mind. However, there’s more to the big picture. They also have to appeal to their current players, giving them more to discover as they learn the game. If the game doesn’t keep giving more at a rate that satisfies players’ needs for new material, and the release schedule doesn’t compensate for that, then the success won’t last.

Also of note is that the one and only serious gripe I have about 5e is its encounter building system. You have to run your numbers through a formula to produce your encounter, then run that encounter through another formula to get it right, solving a partial differential equation along the way (not really). Even then, creatures like the Banshee make it impossible to know whether those formulas produced an encounter with the intended difficulty. As for DMs — and more to the point, adventure designers — the game really isn’t that accessible, and I lost interest in trying to build fair or accurate encounters long before other things took me away from playing RPGs. The only thing that saves 5e in this narrow regard is, as I said yesterday, the beauty of the 5e Monster Manual. So, we have a low barrier to entry for players, resulting in a huge number of players buying Player’s Handbooks, but a high barrier to entry to casual adventure designers, resulting in a huge number of DMs resorting to buying adventures. Hmmm, good marketing strategy, I guess. 🙂

So, all but one of the responses I saw to NewbieDM’s tweet mentioned accessibility, and that’s great, but only one mentioned anything else. This shared observation answers NewbieDM’s question as such: Other than accessibility, the consensus is that 5e doesn’t do anything better than any prior edition of D&D. This isn’t a fatal flaw, of course, because 5e is fun, and people are sticking with it. Perhaps a focus on accessibility is the best approach. After all, 5e is reported to be selling better than all previous editions, but that observation seems to ignore another part of the bigger picture. Could they have done even better if they had taken a different approach? Is the reason for their unprecedented success based on other factors that didn’t apply before (and may not apply in the future)? Despite the success, is there yet another lesson to learn for other game designers? Well, that’s for my next post on these Twitter thoughts and will probably be far more controversial.

More foreshadowing!

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Twitter-Inspired Thoughts, Part I: This is Why the 5th Edition D&D Monster Manual is My Favorite RPG Bestiary @newbiedm @Dm_LSP @MerricB #DnD #5e

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If you enjoy this post, please retweet it.

Last Saturday, I tweeted the following.

All of those discussions were inspired by or involved NewbieDM, S Keldor lord of Castle Greyskull DMLSP (that’s a mouthful), Roving Band of Misfits, and Merric Blackman. I can say that NewbieDM and Merric are good at doing that; I’ve never interacted with S Keldor. Note that while I’ll be quoting them in these posts, much like my brain at 3 am acknowledged about me, I can’t do their arguments justice either. You’ll have to click through to see everything they’ve said. My only purpose here is to express my own opinions while providing context for their genesis and giving credit to those that inspired them. If you want to know what they think, click through and ask them to clarify.

To keep my posts short, each issue will be dealt with in its own post, all with this same introduction. | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV |Part V |

Part 1: This is Why the 5th Edition D&D Monster Manual is My Favorite RPG Bestiary

The 4e and 5e Monster Manuals took opposite approaches to how they loaded them with monsters. Very generally, and something you all already know, the Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition Monster Manual (let’s just say MM going forward) sacrificed variety for detail. The 4eMM1 (get it?) was the first bestiary we had for 4e, yet it didn’t include some iconic monsters such as metallic dragons and frost giants. No frost giants?!?! Even a 4e apologist like me (stay focused!) complained. The trade off was that there was more room to discuss the ecology and history of the monsters that were included, and there were more stat blocks for each of those creatures within that group. Plus, we got humans as monsters. 😐

Bill Murray - Imgflip

5e took the opposite approach. With only a few exceptions, such as dragons, giants, and slaadi (I get a smug sense of satisfaction for knowing the proper plural form of slaad), we got no ecology or history and only one stat block per monster. This provided a lot of variety but considering how hard it is for new DMs to create monsters in 5e (compared to 4e), it was initially frustrating. On the bright side, they had room to give us the flumph. 😐

Bill Murray - Imgflip

Ironically, it would seem that WotC should have taken opposite approaches in both situations, giving us only one, easily-leveled monster for 4e, but giving us multiple monsters for 5e so that we didn’t have to figure out how to create them. But didn’t they? Foreshadowing!

Enough complaining. Considering the title of this post, there must be a happy ending. As a result of my one-stop stat blocks project, I have in my possession something that I’ll never publish: a Word document containing my treatment of all of the 5eMM stat blocks, including ones that aren’t actually in the 5eMM (i.e., variant giant lizards, diseased giant rats, cave bear, and variant insect swarms). That is, I recreated by rote every single stat block in the 5eMM and then some. That gave me some perspective that I’m not sure one can have without at least intently reading the book cover to cover relatively rapidly.

Reskinning monsters is pretty easy in 5e. Here are two examples. First, let’s look at the giants. Before my stat block project, I was arguing with a friend (let’s call him Rob #247). He didn’t like the 5eMM, and I did. He complained that all the giants were the same: weapon attack, throw a rock, and multiattack. He found it boring and uncreative. I don’t think that’s fair. First, it’s actually important that the giants are very similar. It gives a sense that the giants were related evolutionarily speaking. Granted, You have to suspend quite a bit of disbelief in order to play D&D, but when logic is successfully applied, it triggers our instincts for familiarity and order. Second, when you visit the glacial rift of the frost giant Jarl, you don’t expect to see many, if any, fire giants, stone giants, etc. Maybe you’ll see one other giant type who’s an envoy from his leader (such as the cloud giant ambassador in Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), but that’s about it. That means that you can easily adapt the stat blocks for the other giants into the ones you need, even at different CRs , without appearing to use the same stat blocks over and over. There are plenty of other creatures with similar formats (e.g., cyclopes) that can be used as any form of giant.

Let’s now consider the kraken. Maybe you want to unleash it (yeah, I know) on your PCs, but that’s not an option for low level characters. What do you do? Well, have a giant octopus capsize their raft. Still too high a level? Then have a rock capsize the raft, and send a bunch of octopuses (octopi isn’t an English word) attack them. Maybe such a low level encounter isn’t that high a priority for your adventure, making ordinary octopi (octopodes also isn’t an English word) unimportant, but if your BBEG is a kraken, they become important as a means of foreshadowing or providing a theme. Need a lower-CR treant? Try the awakened tree.

The bottom line: The stat blocks are connected in such a way that you realistically have several stat blocks at different CRs that can be trivially adapted to represent the monsters you want. Because the 5eMM went almost 100% in the direction it did, the connections are far better than I’ve ever seen in a bestiary. You don’t just have to reskin some unrelated monster. You can reskin something that’s really close to it both mechanically and thematically, no matter which one you choose. That makes the game far more accessible for DMs than it otherwise would be.

Talk about foreshadowing! My thoughts on accessibility are the topic of the next post!

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My Brief Thoughts on the Satanic Panic @WeisMargaret #DnD #RPG #SatanicPanic

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Margaret Weis, as nerds tend to do from time to time, recently reraised the issue of the Satanic Panic, sharing one of her anecdotes and inspiring others to do the same.

I don’t want to share an anecdote, but rather make some general comments. I was a victim of this bullshit. Though my father was present until the day he died, my mother did all of the child rearing, and she’s an infallibility-of-the-Pope Catholic. (She may not be because Pope Francis isn’t conservative enough, but I wouldn’t know because I no longer speak with her.) As the primary authority figure, she wasn’t fond of me playing D&D. Note well that her favorite way of disciplining me when I was too young to resist was hitting me with a metal spoon with a sharp edge to it. This was no small matter. Another way she liked to discipline me was to give my older brother a free pass to beat the shit out of me daily. They were both part of the Satanic Panic mistreatment.

I have an opinion as to why these dipshits were in such a panic. First, though, I want to assure you that I don’t want to insult the faithful generally. I’m an agnostic, but I see the value to religion, so if you’re religious, I’m cool with it. In fact, in my early days of congoing, I’ve helped make sure some of you found a church to attend in an unfamiliar city. You don’t have to be this way in order to be faithful, but some of you are.

I think D&D was seen as competition for my mother, et al. Even though I saw Zeus, Thor, Shango, and Raiden as the center of fun stories, they saw them as competitors to their religious thrones. I apologize for the offense this will cause, but I agree. They are competitors, because the philosophies, stories, and views of many of the religious even today aren’t much less ridiculous to me than those of the ancient people who would see a microwave oven as witchcraft. This is consistent with the fact that a lot of faith is placed in the writings of ancient people who, in fact, would also see a microwave oven as witchcraft. One who blindly accepts the words of people like that isn’t much better than those people.

Regardless of the psychological rationale, and regardless of your lack of experience with it, the Satanic Panic was real, as was the needless hurt it caused a lot of people. If anyone denies or understates the existence of the Satanic Panic, they’re either lying or ignorant as to its scope.

Perhaps both.

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The Best Lolth @TheRealLolth #DnD #RPG #Lolth

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Good gravy. Nerds have found yet another stupid thing to fight about. Well, I’m not one to say I’m better than anyone else, so I’m jumping into the fray.

This is the best Lolth (hyperlinked because I’m no copyright infringer!). Here’s another source in case that one disappears. That’s right. Just like the rest of the nerds, I think it’s not merely my opinion, but objective fact, and the world depends on everyone accepting that.

Don’t get me wrong. This sort of thing could be fun if you’d approach it that way. Unfortunately, the edition wars still rage on, so we’ve learned nothing.

Do you hear how ridiculous it sounds? Just because of this, I’m doing another mean post today.

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It’s Magic! #MCU #DnD #RPG

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I love merging two worlds that I love. In this case, it’s D&D and the MCU.

I think I’m getting some ideas for some characters . . . .

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Here’s a Conspiracy Theory I Can Get Behind @weeklyworldnews #gaming #ttrpg #rpg

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Going forward, Sundays are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I give you a conspiracy theory that’s right up my alley care of the most trusted name in news media.

You must admit that this would explain the coexistence of Ohio and the Appalachian Mountains in such close proximity.

I want it to be true, so it is.

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In case the tweet is deleted, here’s a screenshot.

An Inconvenient (Though Overblown) Truth @ITCrowdSupport #DnD #RPG #ITCrowd

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Going forward, Sundays are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I deal with an inconvenient truth via a show that had some great moments.

Don’t shoot the messenger. Everyone’s doing it.

Of course, this is bullshit, as my experience has been that marriage is as common among nerds as it is among the general population.

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My Favorite D&D Classes @Erik_Nowak @WinterFantasy #DnD #RPG

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A few days ago, someone on social media asked for everyone’s favorite Dungeons & Dragons class (I know; not an original thought). I’m sure many would agree with me that the answer depends on the edition. I have firsthand knowledge that some would say it’s a stupid question. This post isn’t for you.

AD&D

I loved the monk. I don’t remember AD&D very well, but I played it a few years back on the van ride home from GenCon (which has since morphed into an annual van trip to Winter Fantasy known as Winter Vantasy, the best 14 hours in gaming). In that game, the monk seemed as effective a class as any other. This is despite things I’ve heard about how weak the class was. We weren’t 1st level, but even if the monk is weak at first level, it’s no weaker than a wizard, and the wizard has a huge payoff at later levels. As long as the monk was useful, it was fun.

2nd Edition

I started playing AD&D in 1977, but due to the Satanic Panic, I was prohibited from playing it after 1981. Ergo, I never played 2nd edition until — I’m going to guess — 7 or 8 years ago. My friend, Erik, ran a game over the course of two weekends, and I chose a bard based on my love of the bard class in 4e (the then-current edition). I enjoyed it. I played one other 2nd edition class in a 2-hour game a couple years later, and I don’t remember what that class was. So, saying the bard is my favorite 2nd-edition class wouldn’t be much of a statement, would it?

3.5 Edition

Easy choice: the Warmage. I returned to D&D in 2005, having missed 2e and 3e, and my first character was Frylock, the half-elf warmage (with two levels of rogue). He was fantastic, and no other 3rd-edition class compared. I don’t overpower my characters, so having a character that was inherently good in combat without much work on my part kept the table from being frustrated with my underpowered characters. The fact that my dice were weighted towards rolling 1s was another matter. I also liked the versatility spellcasters got, but sometimes I get overwhelmed and forget everything I can do. The warmage was much better focused, so I was less prone to forget things. Sorry, but I just don’t like playing games to be work. Maybe the 3.5e bard would have been fund, but I never thought to play one.

4th Edition

I loved playing “leaders” in 4e, and the flavor of the bard was (and remains) my favorite for role-playing purposes. My famously low d20 rolls were offset by my ability to help the other characters with healing and bonuses, so playing leaders was a win-win for the table. Me being able to roleplay an entertainer was always fun. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I enjoyed the swarm druid quite a bit, but it was no bard.

5th Edition

The bard wins again, just barely beating out the warlock. The flavor remains the same, so I imagine I’d prefer playing a bard in any edition. It’s a bit too complicated, leading me to forget, for example, to hand out bardic inspiration, but because everyone insists I cast Eldritch Blast on every turn, my warlock often gets spoiled for me.

Verdict

Clearly, the bard is my favorite in general. I never considered playing one until 4th Edition, when leaders became my thing. The AD&D bard has such huge barriers to entry that I can’t imagine many people played characters starting from 1st level that worked their way to it. Sure, it happened, but it was probably rare. The second edition bard was fun, and I never played the 3.5 edition one. Although I’m not a fan of 3.5e, maybe I’ll play again just to play the 3.5e bard.

By the way, the inspiration for this post was an article that google put in my feed: “D&D: How to Build the Perfect Bard.” If you’re interested in boosting your bardic power, maybe that article will help.

What are your favorite classes?

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#DruidWorldProblems @jwrp666 #DnD #RPG

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I must admit I never thought of this.

This meme reminded me of one of my favorite characters, who was the only druid I’d ever played up to that point. Named after Jeff Goodblum’s character in the Fly, Brundle was a thri-kreen swarm druid that could turn into small primates. In other words, he was a bug that turned into a swarm of little humanoids.

I played him in a Dark Sun campaign in which all but the human cleric were thri-kreen from the same hive. I was the middle child of the bunch (no acting necessary) and of low intelligence (no acting necessary), so everyone picked on me (no acting necessary). To make things easier on the DM, I wrote up the post-session journals but did so from the point of view of Brundle. The facts were largely accurate but overstated his importance and criticized the others as useless. Brundle was always the hero and leader of the group … in the journal.

4e swarm druids were the coolest druids.

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A Wizard’s Near Death Experience #DnD #RPG

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Going forward, Sundays are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I provide one wizard’s near death experience.

May be a Twitter screenshot of text that says 'Roleplaying And Rollplaying @RRollplaying Wizard, waking up: What happened? Cleric: We revivified you. What's it like over there? Wizard: There's ..this table with people sıttıno around it...with dice...and I was a sheet of paper with numbers on it... Cleric, laughing: That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard! Posted in r/dndmemes by u/Goblynne24 reddit'

Never believe the nerdy bookworm.

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