D&D legacies that just won't stop

I've been thinking lately as I read 13th Age and DungeonWorld and the new D&D that we still have a number of rather odd legacies in D&D based on the original edition.

Obviously one of the big ones is spell slots. While they made sense in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, they have stopped making sense in 5th edition. I mention this because during/after my first official 5th edition game, I had to argue that a first level cleric can only cast 2 spells. The guys had somehow confused spells prepared with spell slots, which might be a legacy of the playtests, but I couldn't fathom how they did that and why it took an hour afterwards to convince the DM how the rules read. Eventually I did citing the multiclass rules as my evidence (you combine slots, not spells prepared/known). Anyway, there's no real reason not to just say those are magic points and your magic points have levels. Slots are the currency of the game and they really function just like the slots did for 3rd edition sorcerers. Buy why call them slots? Tradition.

The paladin and ranger come to mind as another odd tradition. Both have survived since shortly after the dawn of time, but they've drifted quite a bit from their original incarnations. Rangers were originally more like fighters in 1st edition, gaining giant-slaying powers but weren't tied to bows or two-weapon fighting. Second edition expanded rangers by letting them choose favored enemies and rolling a few thief skills into them. But rangers Rangers lost their magic in 4th edition, only to gain a little back in the essentials classes (when they realized two power sources weren't terrible for a class, also power source was largely meaningless). Paladins likewise changed from the cavalier-like devotion to right and good (alignment-based powers) to serving a deity (4th edition and 5th edition). I think they're reasonable as classes, though the fighter steps on their toes (and vice versa) to an extent. But now we're stuck with warrior druids and warrior clerics which, imho, aren't as distinct as the older versions of the classes.

Elves and gnomes are another case of odd tradition. Third edition brought us the Sorcerer class, but Elves who are said to have innate magic got wizard as their favored class. Even long ago the Druid came to the party late: it's not hard to envision elves as being primarily associated with druidic magic. Gnomes had illusionist in 3.0, but it changed to bard in 3.5 rather than sorcerer, and their innate magic was something that ought to have distinguished them from dwarves and halflings a little more. Sorcerer could have been a better fit here than wizard, especially if sorcerer were given a way to focus on enchantments or illusions.

Bringing us to Sorcerer. Its kinda cool that the third edition sorcerer has this vague story of dragonblood to give magic power, but they ran with it in 4th edition and 5th edition (13th Age does likewise). This means now that sorcerer is a traditional class, its also stuck with draconic and wild magic as its essence. A beguiler or trickster option would really speak to the idea of the elf or gnome with innate fey powers.

Tradition. Rangers and paladins have been popular classes (I think because they not only have some distinct powers that other warriors don't have, but also because they fill a warrior role), so we're stuck with them. Elves originally cast wizardly magic, so they need to be good with that but we can't switch them to sorcery. Or god forbid giving them druidic powers that actually might mesh more with ideas of what Elven culture might be.

We have done away with some aspects of tradition, such as the Paladin's alignment restriction, or now the bard's limited spellcasting. And that's not a bad thing. But 3rd and 4th edition have been really conservative with setting material, so we didn't really get any broad new archetypes entering into the distinct forms of that d20-rolling fantasy roleplaying game or its followers and acolytes. 

Alignment in 5th Edition: Throwing out the 4e baby with the bathwater?

Now that we have the Basic D&D rules online, I see they have the familiar old alignment system, though alignment doesn't seem to have any mechanical effects. I think this is a little mistake, though I'm going to call it a missed opportunity rather than a tragedy.

See, the 4e notion of unaligned is missing, replaced with boring neutrality. There's no real benefit to being aligned with any cosmic force, and now effects like protection from evil will only really affect undead and demons.

So what might have been the better solution? Keep unaligned and make aligned creatures rarer.

Missed Opportunities in D&D Next

So, apparently at GenCon they announced that they're pretty well happy with the playtest feedback for the game, so most of the design is done now. Presumably lots of development to do still to get the math right, add in some missing options, etc. That strikes me as a little odd, given that we just got this packet recently and haven't given feedback on this version. I don't think this is all one big marketing ploy, but I guess they don't expect to be making many changes to what we've got now.

I largely like some of the changes they've made. Fighters now get lores, and they acknowledge that some classes/builds should have skills (i.e. expertise dice) including knight-type fighters. After being disappointed that there was a loss of options from the previous packet (particularly in the cleric and rogue), I saw there were some other quite nice options and a lot of the stuff does look like an improvement. I still wish monks had a maneuver system instead of lame ki powers and that there were a few more races included so we could easily run Planescape or Al-Qadim. That said, I think there are a few changes that really should have been made, and I'm afraid we won't see them in the next edition right away.

Episodic Games, not Epics

As a teacher, one of the hard things to learn is to tell a complete story in a lecture. You don't want to just keep plodding through the material in the book, but make sure each day starts with an introduction and ends with a conclusion. I think an RPG session should be very much the same.

This can be hard, because you want to plot out a nice epic. You have a vision of the end. Its one of your best ideas and showcases all your creative genius. But ultimately, I think this view of an RPG is somewhat flawed.

I'm guilty of this sin too. In the Dark Sun game I finished running a year or so ago, I had a great plot which answered a question for me about why a wooden spear killed a sorcerer king. I decided that the other sorcerer kings orchestrated it. The Heartwood spear wasn't a holy primal artifact, but dragon-forged. Everyone knew what Kalak was attempting with his ziggurat. But the other sorcerer-kings knew that they would be in danger if they acted together. Like a big game of chicken, no one would be willing to expose themselves by making the first move. So they set up mortals to do it.

A nice plot, but that doesn't help with each individual game session. I tried to plan things about the one piece of the puzzle that I wanted to reveal each game. Early on I planted the seeds so they would know that the sorcerer-kings each hated a different race and even tried to exterminate their enemies. I had a race by the different factions to find the Orbs of Kalid-Ma, the artifact that Kalak was using to attempt full dragon transformation, and also the Heartwood Spear which disappeared (confusing people to no end with talk of spheres and spears). Some games, however, fell short of that mark, I'm sure.

Part of the problem, I've come to believe, is 4e's emphasis on the encounter. I found myself plotting encounters much more than stories. The plot was in the background while encounters took more planning. It was easy, but that's one thing that left me feeling dissatisfied with the game. This is why the one-hour game session goal of D&D Next is so appealing.

So I've come to believe more and more than an RPG session needs to be treated more like a short story. Like a good episode of a TV show. Each revelation of the larger plot can be a shard in each adventure, but a session should, in general, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That can be really hard with 4e, where you're more likely to plot the 3 encounters you'll have time to run.

How many systems does a game like D&D need?

I've written before about unique class systems in D&D, but how many should there be? Clearly older editions, like Second Edition, had a bloat of independent systems. Third edition did wonders to try to unify many of these with the d20 mechanic (pick up a d20, roll high). Fourth edition rolled back some of these systems, or at least rolled them higher into the game's math. The early classes from the first two players' handbooks (and some from the third) followed the same template of at-will, encounter, and daily powers. But each class had its own unique (and often lengthy) list. Also, systems like feats and action points had every class participate, though feats might be restricted.

I think spells are one great system where powers can be shared. Even if there is a distinction between Arcane and Divine (And Primal? And Psionic?) magic, allowing classes like the sorcerer, warlock, and wizard to share spells means that no one class will get all the support (I'm looking at you, 4e Wizard/Mage/Witch/Sha`ir/Bladesinger especially compared to the artificer, swordmage, runepriest, and seeker). I think 4e discovered this in the essentials run, but it would have been great if there were more power-source based powers that all martial or arcane classes could share.

Necromancy and Necromancers in Heoric D&D

Necromancy has always been a popular subject in RPGs and fantasy fiction. Usually, necromancers and undead are the villains. So when I look at the Necromancer theme/specialty in the new playtest, I'm a bit unsettled.

First, its great that they include it. 4e went far too long without a good mechanical way to support this archetype. Reflavoring can only take one so far, though the Shaman did relatively well as a necromancer type. It doesn't even take much searching to find a small host of third party OGL necromancy products, so the necromancer is probably popular/iconic enough to warrant some treatment in the basic D&D rules.

3.5/OGL products:

• Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers (Sword and Sorcery Studios)
• Necromancy: Beyond the Grave (Mongoose)
• Encyclopaedia Arcane Necromancy (Mongoose)
• Secret College of Necromancy (Green Ronin)
• The Dread Codex (Adamant)
• The Dread Codex 2: The Necromancer's Tome (Adamant)
• Necromancer's Legacy: Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes (EN)

So why does this new necromancer theme grind my gears? Simply put, its not a necromancer.

Second Wind + Rampage = a Heroic Moment? or Action Points revised.

D&D 4e introduced a lot of interesting elements to the game. Despite its focus on math and balance, I think some of these features are really good, because the add to the narration as well as being viable in combat. Some of these disparate features could be linked, however, and I've got an inkling of how to do it.

Second wind allows PCs to spend one of their own healing surges in combat, so its basically a self heal. The concept doesn't quite match the mechanic though, because one doesn't necessarily control a second wind in real life. It does, however, capture that heroic moment when the protagonist manages to shake off their pain, stand up again, and whump whump whump. So over all, I think its a good mechanic, though it might be better with a little tweaking. Depending on how HP works, it may be divorced from surges. I'd also be interested in seeing how it might work as slightly random. It also might be a good candidate for an actual daily power, as it makes some sense that you might not be able to catch a second wind multiple times a day.

This brings me to a random class feature: the Barbarian's Rampage. When he scores a critical hit, the barbarian can make a free charge attack. This is a neat feature, but I don't know that I really saw it come into play. Its also not really modifiable, except by what boosts critical hits. So barbarians with Rampage get an extra benefit from their critical hits, meaning they ought to get things to boost those.

As I was thinking about this, these two mechanics seem like they do the same sort of thing. They represent that heroic moment when someone pushes through the pain and tries to pull off a minor hail mary.

Days and time in RPGs

There's a lot of hullabaloo going around these days about daily powers in RPGs. Now, of course, this is focused on D&D Next, but it really has a broader impact than that. Its hard to say if the hatred for daily powers is even a matter of play style or simulation versus narration, because what does a daily power represent? This is the whole five minute work day issue, but also ties into the quadratic wizards, linear fighters issue. I'll try to focus here on the five-minute workday though. I think the issue is slightly odd day-based game-design in a game where days aren't the right time frame. I've talked about this before, but mostly in the context of healing. I want to focus on daily powers here.

First, Daily powers have a long history in D&D. The magic system, of course, has daily re-charges. But the paladin, monk, and many classes from Oriental Adventures all use the game day as a unit of rest. Daily power refreshing is a stable of D&D, but does it have to be? Does a daily refresh lead to a five-minute workday?

Even in the early days of D&D, spells weren't quite "daily". There was an extensive spell memorization requirement. It took 15 minutes per spell level to memorize a spell. So a low level magic user might study her spell book for an hour or two, but a high level magic user might literally take days to memorize her full allotment of spells. To be precise, that's six hours for a seventh level magic user to memorize all her spells, sixteen and a half hours for a 12th level magic user, and almost 35 hours of study for a 20th level magic user. Surely if you followed these rules in first edition, a party can't just "go nova", rest for a day, and then return to cast its way through the next level of the dungeon. Five minute work day? Not exactly.

What makes a tabletop RPG "videogamey"?

One vague criticism that's often leveled against D&D in the past decade is that it's "videogamey", whether it was third edition being like Diablo or 4th edition being like World of Warcraft. But what does this criticism mean?

On the surface, it seems to be an emotional way of saying "I don't like it." But I think it goes a little deeper than that. I think it all comes down to creativity at a personal level.

First, of course D&D (or any tabletop RPG) is going to be like a videogame, because many aspects of RPG videogames were derived from D&D in the first place. In fact, if you go back to the 80s and 90s you'll find D&D video games. Surely those were videogamey? Let's move beyond that though.

• A tabletop RPG relies on gamemaster creativity, a video game does not.

This gets at one of the core grognard complaints, that third and fourth edition reduce the role of the DM to a glorified calculator, with concepts like wealth-by-level, XP budgets, and the like. I don't mean to imply that earlier editions of the game didn't have crazy subsystems or nit-picky rules for things like falling damage, but the trend towards balanced encounters and treasure parceling is one way in which D&D might feel videogamey.

• A tabletop RPG relies on player creativity, a video games does not.

I distinctly remember playing a intro 4e game with some friends, and crushing one of their souls as the DM when he wanted to charge an enemy and push him through the window of a cottage. Sure, it can be done in 4e, but if you want to follow the rules its hard to see how that desired action should be implemented. Conversely, when all your options are laying out in front of you in the form of power cards, you tend to think in terms of those categories, rather than going outside the box. So the proliferation of fixed powers is one way that makes recent editions of D&D feel videogamey.

• A videogame is repetitive, D&D is not.

This criticism goes along with the criticism of the powers system from 4e and some of the class features of third edition. Video games tend to have either unlimited magic attacks or a spell point system, so that you blast away repeatedly with your best attacks. You kill the same set of enemies over and over again in the hopes that they drop better items. You wander around the same maze, searching for fruit and using your power-ups to defeat your ghostly enemies each level. Tabletop RPGs do repetitive things, but in more creative ways. Crucially, in a tabletop RPG, player creativity lessens repetitiveness, or at least it has the potential to do so.

The criticism of videogameyness, then, is really a criticism for having too many spelled out rules. Or at least that's one reasonable and logical component of the criticism. Going back to those old D&D video games, you see it there too. Focusing on the mechanical level, attacks--both magical and mundane--have only one fixed effect. Unless the programmers code it, you can't hide up on that crumbling wall and rain down death on the kobolds from above. Any computer adaptation of D&D loses a lot of spontaneous creativity on the part of the player and DM. It gains some vital benefits: video games do not require a troop of friends and a parent's basement (or other suitable playspace).

Now, as a DM, I loved the encounter building in 4e. It was, by and large, easy. Especially with the online tools, you could easily sort through things and find a slew of appropriate monsters, traps, and hazards with ease. The d20srd has some searchability, so third edition and pathfinder have some of the same options, though I don't find the searching or encounter building to be quite as nice as 4e.

Is there a solution to this problem? I think so. Consider the hypothetical fighter. People complain that he has a lack of options, but I think their complaint is that its not clear what a fighter should be able to do besides swing his sword. Learning distinct maneuvers to disarm, bullrush, knock someone down, etc. is tedious, and distinct mechanisms for that will lead to accusations of videogaminess. It also shouldn't be required that people constantly push their enemies with their basic attacks, which is one fault of 4e. But listing options and plausible effects of those options (e.g. pushing someone in combat might knock them back five feet under normal conditions) will spark some creativity. And adding one more option, along the lines of "Preform some other awesome feat" in addition to "Disarm", "Trip", "Bullrush", and the like might just help remind people to think outside the box, while at the same time giving them some notion of the size and shape of the box.

If this approach is adopted, the problems people see with the magic of 4e (and to a lesser extend 3.5) might rectify themselves as well. In 4e, a wizard might use scorching burst all day long and never start his opponent's hair on fire or damage their priceless tome implement. Some of that good immersive verisimilitude gets lost in those mechanical descriptions. But some general advice for keywords (spells with the fire keyword might start fires), and creative uses for these spells may return en masse. This is the sort of spontaneous creativity that people play RPGs for, and why a computer game--at least in the foreseeable future--just can't compete. When rules systems are seen as emulating computer games in this way (e.g. fixed and exhaustively defined options which may be divorced from any secondary effects), the criticism of videogaminess is probably valid.

Healing in D&D

While each edition has brought changes to hit points and healing, Fourth edition's changes have been the most radical. Theses primarily involve: off-action healing, non-clerical healing, healing surges, and self-healing.

From the beginning through 3.5, healing has consumed the cleric's turn (ok, except for the book of 9 swords Crusader, but that's a direct precursor to 4e). You made a conscious choice to spend your turn casting a healing spell instead of doing something else (like attacking or casting another spell).

While paladins have had the ability to lay on hands, and bards gained access to healing spells in third edition, the cleric (and druid or specialty priests as sub-types of cleric or divine casters) have held a monopoly on healing. This is less true in third edition where anyone could take the use magical device to use a wand of cure light wounds (its like 50 healing potions for a pretty low price!). So some other classes had access to healing, everyone knew that a bard, druid, dragon shaman, or whatever just wasn't as great at it. So there is a reason that someone always had to play a cleric, and this is is. 4e finally made it explicitly clear with roles: warlords, bards, shamen, ardents, artificers, runepriests, warpriests, sentinel druids could all fill this role.

Revising Rituals for Dark Sun 4e

One of my the benefits of playing a table-top RPG is the infinite customizability. Since a human is in charge of things, you're not bound by pre-determined rules, pre-planned adventures, or anything else some game designer dreamed up. House rules are king.

Over the last two editions of D&D, the rules have been more and more formalized, and the math more balanced. This leads, however, so some difficulties in customization. Admittedly, the major difficulty is remembering that the rules are malleable in the first place. The second is finding the right level of customization.

One of my proudest achievements in the last D&D game I ran was customizing the 4e ritual system for my dark sun game. Not any DS campaign, but specifically my game. Here's an example ritual I gave out: