The D&D Next Playtest

I participated in the D&D Next Playtest from start to finish, a sentence which here means that I spent a year and a half being gradually convinced that the 5th Edition of D&D was going to be a disaster. This has not turned out to be the case, largely because the nature of a Playtest is very misleading.

The first playtest packet was very stripped down and the simplest set of D&D rules since Basic. If you were approaching the playtest as a fan of the 4th Edition of D&D this was an immediate red flag. Looking at the Dwarf Fighter sheet provided, all you could boast about that character's options was that it was strong, perceptive, and hit pretty reliably with weapons. At second level your Dwarf got to make a second attack. In the previous edition your Dwarf Fighter had two combat maneuvers he or she could use whenever, one that could be used in every combat encounter, and another that could be used once an in-game day. You had a list of 5 skills of which you could choose 3 to be very proficient in. With that first Next playtest packet you background had 3 skills attached, and you didn't get to pick them from a larger list. Every Soldier apparently is perceptive, intimidating, and a Survivalist. Not a lot of room for individuality.

It felt like the end of the world; Wizards were throwing out every positive aspect of 4th Edition in order to pander to the 3.5 playerbase that had switched to Pathfinder. Mike Mearls signed his letter as Himmler and had a post script which suggested dogs and cats can live together in peace.

So it was something of a surprise when, 3 months later, the next packet which featured actual build rules for the classes rather than just a pregenerated character sheet, showed that Fighters had a brand new mechanic: The Expertise Die. This was a die (d6 at first level) that you could spend each turn to use one of 3 maneuvers you had at first level. It could be used for extra damage, to reduce the damage you take, and a third determined by a Fighting Style you chose for your character. The addition of the Expertise Die brought combat options back to the fighter while still keeping it a simple-to-understand class.

Expertise Die were a big hit initially. By the November 2012 Playtest packet Fighters, Monks, and Rogues were all using the system and choosing from what was becoming an extensive list of Maneuvers. As they were being adopted by multiple classes, Wizards began referring to them as Martial Damage Dice. Looking back, that should have been a sign of the mechanic's end, because a major goal with Next was that it would differentiate heavily between the design of each class. So by March of the next year only Fighters had Expertise Die. This left the Monk especially anemic as it had, up until that point, been very invested in the use of maneuvers.

Every release of the Fighter after that March update seemed less and less interesting because Expertise was only being utilized as extra damage. This though is what I meant about the Playtest process being misleading. If something disappeared from the Playtest with the release of the next packet, that either meant it was so poorly received that it was scrapped, or that it was so well received that they didn't bother testing it any further during the open beta. In 2014 we can open up the 5e PHB and see that Fighters have Maneuvers that they can use if they choose the subclass that grants them. That lack of Maneuvers in the final leg of the Open Playtest was to beef up the simpler Fighter Subclass which relies on hitting hard.

My Background in Tabletop Gaming: Part 3

My regular online Pathfinder group includes a guy whose handle is Volin, and he's responsible for getting me into 13th Age. I wasn't intending on jumping straight to 13th Age but I'm just that excited about it all the time, so there you are. 13th Age is a table-top fantasy RPG created by the Lead Designers of two past incarnations of D&D: Jonathan Tweet of 3rd Edition and Rob Heinsoo of 4th. If you've ever wondered what a 50/50 amalgamation of those two games would look like, it's Star Wars Saga Edition. But if you wanted to know what a fantasy d20 system with heavy influences from those games but eschews the clunk and adds new narrativist mechanics which themselves work just as well within this system or as houserules to whatever d20 system you're using...then you are clearly already very much familiar with 13th Age and just sort of leading us all on.

Now I don't intend this to be a review of 13th Age but, again, love at first sight, so let me quickly tell you why Backgrounds are the best mechanic. With 3rd, 4th, and 5th you resolved attempts at doing tasks outside of combat with skill checks. You have a number called a skill modifier which is drawn from your Ability Scores (like Acrobatics being affected by your Dexterity), so you roll a d20 and add together the die roll and your modifier. If your number is higher than the DC (Difficulty Class) that the DM decides this task has, then you succeed.

With 13th Age you don't have a standardized list of skills. You have 8 Background Points, and you can assign as many as 5 to any background you come up with. Are you a dashing Troubadour who loves to relax in his off time fishing? Well then you'd assign more points to the Troubadour background you decide on than the fishing one; maybe 5 in one and 3 in the other. But you don't just make "Troubadour" and "Fisher" your backgrounds, because that's boring. These are yours to come up with, so you fashion a quick little anecdote which is clearly related but sounds like part of a much bigger and very interesting story. So instead you have 5 points in "My Trobar leu's bring all the girls to the yard...though half of them have weapons." And during play you decide you want to recite a saucy bit of poetry at the festival. First you roll your d20 and then you convince your DM that you have a Background that's relevant. In this case, obviously your 5 point Background should apply so you add 5 to the roll.

The thing is, that's just the simplest way of utilizing Backgrounds. The real fun comes when you try and use them in less obvious situations, like trying to help a Duke write up a response to allegations that he's had a string of affairs. You turn to your DM and say "Look I write for a living. I can help him," but your DM isn't convinced. He says lyrical poetry and political proclamations are too different for you to be much help. But if you'd phrased it like, "I've caused plenty of political scandals with my satires. I should at least be able to point out anything likely to raise ire." Maybe that sounds more convincing and you get your bonus to the roll. +Ash Law lays this out really well in his 13th Age Organized play documents.

With Skills you're dealing with pure mechanics. The lists are long and kind of vague in the hopes of covering anything a character would try to do. Lying about your religious affiliation? Bluff. Overemphasizing the martial prowess of your buddy? Bluff. Roll the die and add a number. Meet the DC. There's no inherent creativity in that subsystem. Backgrounds though? You create your list, you create the justification that allows you to use it to influence your roll, and then you add a number to a number to meet a DC. You arrive at the same endpoint, but you got to use your imagination along the way.

I've been collect the books throughout this past year and I'm looking forward to running it next year here at the college campus. If 13th Age sounds neat to you, look into ordering it at the Pelgrane Press Store. If you'd rather look at the system before committing cash then the Archmage Engine is an SRD you'll want to check.

I'll be wrapping up this look at my past as I talk about my experience with D&D 5e in the next post, and from there I'll do a writeup on the live session I ran at the college community center.

My Background in Tabletop Gaming Part 2

I was first made aware of Pathfinder on the traditional gaming board of 4chan, /tg/ in 2009. By this time I'd played and ran D&D 4e and had looked at 3.5 a good bit, and I could tell that a big problem with 3.5's design was what are known as "dead levels." Now any level based game puts a lot of focus on the accomplishment you feel when you gain a level. In D&D typically it meant you'd gain some hit points and greater accuracy with your attacks. If you were a spellcaster you could learn new spells, or perhaps be able to prepare and cast more the spells you knew.

Starting in 3rd Edition, every other level you were guaranteed a feat, and depending on your class you could gain bonus feats at specific levels. 3rd also made the decision to spread out the class features you gain from your character class, but only for the first 10 or 12 levels. Past that you really didn't gain any specific benefit from taking those levels in one class or another. This was in all likelihood done to promote the usage of Prestige Classes (thematically focused classes with a list of requirements for you to take levels in, such as a certain focus in a few select skills and a number of levels, usually 7, in a given base class).

Various issues arose from this decision, however. 3rd Edition was designed with the intent that not all character options be equal and that some feats, spells, and classes were simply better overall than others. This coupled with a relative lack of incentive to progress in your base class once you had all of your class features meant that any class that didn't have spells would find themselves well behind the curve if they didn't begin multi-classing.

When you add those factors up together, they become one of the major problems I have with 3rd Edition. Pathfinder (which is the same system as D&D 3.5 with tweaks and fixes published by a different company) addressed that issue by minimizing the amount of dead levels for all classes. Even up into the higher levels you would gain new class features and, at 20th level, a Capstone ability. These are very powerful features; as an example the Rogue, a class to represent tricksters, thieves, and cutthroats, from first level have a class feature called Sneak Attack which allows them to deal extra damage to a surprised enemy. The Rogue Capstone, Master Strike, states that when a Rogue deals sneak attack damage they can additionally put the target to sleep for 1-4 hours, daze them for 1-6 rounds, or kill them outright. Capstones provided a major incentive to stick to one class for a campaign, and that intrigued me.

After joining a Skype group dedicated to playing tabletop games I found myself with plenty of Pathfinder to play. While initially Pathfinder seemed a considerable improvement over 3.5, after three years of regular play it has revealed itself as deeply flawed, oftentimes more than its predecessor in the same problem areas. Pathfinder's real strength today is the robust line of printed adventures it boasts, complimented by the wealth of adventures available from smaller independent publishers online. The system itself though has grated on me for too long now for me to have much interest in it outside of those adventure paths.

Next we'll look at the new d20 games I've had experience with, 13th Age and D&D 5th Edition.

My Background in Tabletop Gaming: Part 1

Now perhaps would be a good time to establish how much familiarity I have with tabletop RPGs, and of course knowing that you've played longer than I have will make it much easier to dismiss any points I have that you don't agree with; allow me to accommodate you.

During high school my little clique of friends and I decided we should learn how to play D&D. David bought up the core books to 3.5 from the Borders bookstore and we set about reading them. None of us could figure out how to actually play. He eventually returned the books and we shrugged our shoulders and go on with our lives.

As I came to college in fall of 2008 I fell in with a bunch that would eventually form the school's fantasy and sci-fi club, and the founder was adamant about getting some new players for his fresh D&D 4^th Edition books. So he helped us make characters and we showed up eager to learn how to play. The campaign began with all of us in an arena as enslaved gladiators. Now I wasn't actually told how the rules of D&D worked, I just knew to roll initiative when a fight started and that if it was my turn that I could attack. It wasn't until after that session that I saw my character, Tarnykus Thunderscale the Dragonborn Warlord, was capable of healing. That came in handy in the second session, since we ended up fighting the guards of the arena. Who were level 14 Yuan-Ti; we were level 2. We managed to bust out though since we'd found all the other gladiators and convinced them to help us (then snuck away while they kept the guards tangled). Having completely hopped his rails, Matt introduced a DMPC to sneak us off the island.

Looking back, it's pretty obvious that this wasn't the optimal way to be playing 4^th Edition D&D. For my part, I started to get really invested in learning the system and seeing if I could get a better grasp on it, so I grabbed the books and started planning out my first campaign.

The first session I ever ran didn't go super well. I was ripping off the story to Seven Samurai and had an uninspired and heavily railroaded first delve cooked up. I was inflexible. I included mechanics of my own design in a boss fight which came to an unsatisfying conclusion. I could tell I needed to get better.

So I read those forums. I also borrowed a copy of Keep on the Shadowfell from a friend (at the time). I studied that thing; tried to understand why it was laid out the way it was and see how I could use that as a model for my own attempts. I ran 3/4ths of that adventure for two players that semester. Meanwhile, I was branching out. I started playing Werewolf: The Forsaken and Star Wars: Saga Edition that same semester. I wouldn't get to play much of either afterward, but I was approaching a level of familiarity with the hobby that I could appreciate what they did well and didn't do well. I'm still in love with the Condition Track in Saga Edition. The idea that you could build a character that ignores dealing damage and just focuses on knocking you further down that track until you're either unconscious or left a babbling incoherent non-threat...it's the very best way to get me wistful.

Over the next year I got big on roleplaying over the internet using Maptools, a digital tabletop program. I got to play in a wonderful campaign called Palonian Intrigue run in D&D 4^th Edition, and played what has since become my very favorite character: Canticus D. Feywood, Half-Elven Bard. Canticus had so long studied the heroic poems, songs, and Eddas that he was convinced he could use his knowledge of how those stories unfolded to inform his decisions and lead him safely through his own adventure, which he could then profit off of by writing his own songs detailing his exploits. He got wrapped up in a truly labyrinthine scandal involving a frame-up between the human kingdom of Palonia and the Elven fortress the Aegisthorn. It soon became evident that we had no idea how far up it all went, and all throughout the murderous wildcard Velvet dogged us.

Next up: My Pathfinder period

The Shatterpoint Explained

For those of you unaware, a "shatterpoint" is a phenomena that occurs in the extended universe of Star Wars. A shatterpoint is a moment in time recognized by those with Force precognizance to be an opportunity for massive and far-reaching change. Those Jedi or Sith who developed their ability to foresee the future saw these as moments that they couldn't hope to influence indirectly; a shatterpoint is an event that can completely change everything that was originally to follow. You can think of the climax of Return of the Jedi as a clear shatterpoint: Emperor Palpatine was a master of Force Precognition, yet he placed himself on the uncompleted Death Star and brought Luke Skywalker into his own throne room. He can't be a bad planner because, after all, he went from Senator of a Republic to an Emperor in about 10 years. Palpatine could see that Luke Skywalker had become a shatterpoint. Luke would either decide to become Palpatine's apprentice, murder his own father, and become a terrible Sith Lord and help the Emperor to stamp out the Rebel Alliance, or he would do exactly what occurred in the actual film. It was a huge risk, but Palpatine intervened hoping he could use the shatterpoint to change the future in his favor.

Well, the tabletop rpg genre is entering a shatterpoint right now. In the past couple of years Paizo's Pathfinder RPG has outsold Wizard of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons, a mainstay and veritable juggernaut in the community for 40 years now. The last year and a half has seen WotC perform an Open Playtest for the new edition of D&D, which has began its release as of last month. No doubt in retaliation, Paizo has announced for next year the book Pathfinder Unchained which will feature new and alternative rules to the system. Paizo staff have of late been candid about the fact that the system their game is built upon is nearly 15 years old and that there are a number of facets of it they feel could be improved upon. They have been hesitant to do so in the past due to the initial advertising strategy Paizo used which marked Pathfinder as a continuation of the 3.x d20 system past WotC's discontinuation of D&D 3.5. For the foreseeable future these two publishers will be at all-out war for control of the market.

Though there are still other competitors in the arena. Fantasy Flight Games have just recently released the Second Edition of their Warhammer 40k rpg Dark Heresy and are continuing to expand upon their Star Wars license with Star Wars: Age of Rebellion and next year's Star Wars: Force and Destiny. Smaller publishers have produced a number of new systems within the past year that challenge the way we gamers have come to think of the classic fantasy dungeon crawl. 13th Age, Numenara, and Dungeon World each provide a welcome and refreshingly modern alternative to the same old D&D all over again. Could one of these games find itself standing at the peak of the hobby? If Paizo could do it, then perhaps the possibility is there.

The goal of this blog from here on then will be to report on how this shatterpoint unfolds. I'll be reviewing the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook soon, along with 13th Age's 13 True Ways. You can also expect reports and analyses of my own games, those I run and play in. The future is an uncertain one, but I'm hoping you're willing to do what I plan to: just roll along with it.