The Smart, Nimble Fighter With Shocking Grasp

 games  5 Responses »
Aug 152012
 

So far, I’m finding the new character creation rules a bit of a mixed bag. Part of it is the lack of complete, robust Background and Specialty lists. There’s just not enough of them.

Or, more importantly, there are not enough Skills and Feats, because I’m assuming that behind the existing Background and Specialty rules is the open-ended character creation system, the one that says a PC picks three Skills and one Feat at first level, and then one Feat at third level, etc., and that such an option will eventually be part of the rules.  That seems to be the way they’re doing it — heck, listen to the new PvP/PA D&D Podcasts, Mike Mearls practically comes out and says it. I want to craft my characters a’la carte.

But, in the spirit of playing within the playtest rules, I’ve also been mucking about with odd combos of existing options. And honestly, it’s fun to put some of these things together, just to see how far they’ll go. Continue reading »

New D&D Next Packet — Initial Impressions

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Aug 132012
 

Wow! I am happy to admit I was wrong about this one. I thought we wouldn’t see the next D&D Next playtest until after Gen Con, but WotC dropped it on us today, three days before the event! Awesome! And this feels more like an actual “playtest packet” instead of a demo, mainly because of the character creation rules. I can actually run some games with this one.

I’ll be blogging more coherently in the coming days, but here’s some of my initial observations:

  • I’m liking the fighter “expertise dice” more than I thought I would. It’s currently very Alpha / 1.0, but I can already see the potential.
  • The cleric seems mostly unchanged. I was at least hoping for some more domains. Hum.
  • The more I look at the Wizard, the more I think it feels a little … kludge-y. I love the Vancian style as much as the next grognard, but something about this feels more complicated than it needs to be. I dunno. I’ll have to play it to be sure.
  • Rogues are beginning to shape up, but I kind of wish they had expertise dice. I really do.
  • The bestiary needs to be longer. :(
  • I need to write an adventure or two!

That’s all for now. I’m off to create a dozen characters and see what I can come up with.

New Fighter ‘Combat Superiority’ Rules

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Jul 302012
 

So, today’s Legends & Lore column. It’s … iiinnnnnteresting …

On the one hand, it’s a real signal that the D&D Next team is willing to try out some odd new things in order to give people what they want. People demanded a more interesting fighter, and this is definitely ‘interesting.’ A dice pool made up of non-d20 dice, that can be either used as boost dice or spent like points to perform combat maneuvers, and that refreshes each round? I can’t recall a mechanic quite like this in any prior version of D&D (though there are definite parallels in other games).

On the other hand, that the devs are willing to do this really exposes that D&D Next is still in a very volatile development phase. If they were as set in stone about the direction of the game as some people have accused them of being, there’s no way they’d put something like this out there. Tthis rule has got to be thought of as not even Beta, but Alpha — a first trial, at risk of being scrapped or drastically overhauled. I really get a sense that this playtest is going to drag out longer than I originally thought it might. Gen Con 2014 is a real possibility. Continue reading »

When Will We See The Next Playtest Release?

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Jul 272012
 

When the D&D Next playtest came out, there was a statement made somewhere (my search-fu is weak, I have been unable to find it) by Mike Mearls (I think) that they hoped to release some sort of updated rules packet for D&D Next in “five or six weeks,” with the possibility of character generation rules by the end of summer. Clearly, that first goal has come and gone, and we’ve not seen any sort of playtest document update.

I don’t hold it against them; they weren’t promising, just speculating, and I suspect that the flood of feedback was more than they anticipated [especially if they predicted feedback as well as they predicted server load on that first day of release -- i.e., poorly]. But it’s bit frustrating for those of us who were expecting a more active and continuous playtest process.

So, when will we see another public playtest release? I have a hunch.  Continue reading »

Going Green

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Jul 202012
 

More Magic with Daniel last night.

In the first game, I beat him again. He wanted to add other cards in, so we played with the standard 60-card deck, but he’s not too familiar with the ins and outs of when he can cast Instants, etc., and he’s still not reading his cards like I’m teaching him to (i.e. pausing to read a card’s full text before playing it). Also, the Red Intro Deck is a tricky deck to play — it relies on mobbing up lots of little creatures and generating 1/1 tokens and sacrificing, none of which fit Daniel’s playstyle. He likes things smashy.

So for our second game, I offered to let him use the Green deck: lots of big beasts, a few direct damage spells, and Trample aplenty. This turned out to be much more his speed! I confess to playing conservatively right now, and I’ll give him strategy tips, but he still did pretty well and ultimately trampled me to death with a giant spider who was carrying a Ring that gave it +1/+1 counters every round (I wasn’t drawing any artifact destroyers).

After the game, I told Daniel to keep using the Green deck. So now he’s Green (oh, did I mention that he got the Green ultrarare Planeswalker card?) and I’m Red for the time being. Which I don’t mind; Green was my favorite color back in my playing days, but Red was a close second. I always liked Red/Black, though, so I might start thinking about tweaking this thing …

Flooping the Pig

 games  1 Response »
Jul 182012
 

As previously reported, D&D Next has turned out to be a hit with my son, Daniel. Sadly, we haven’t gotten to play again since the second game. I had promised him a game Saturday, but we were out of the house all evening and never got to play. It’s still in the cards for this weekend — I think I might use the orc caves this time and build it around the dwarven mine foreman’s daughter being kidnapped … something with a little more NPC interaction.

In the meantime, I pounced on an opportunity yesterday to continue Daniel’s introduction to tabletop games. This time, I have Adventure Time to thank. Continue reading »

The Further Adventures of Dwarfio

 games  1 Response »
Jul 092012
 

Last week’s introduction to D&D Next left an impression on my son Daniel, and he began asking me when we could play again. So this weekend we sat down to finish the Dwarf Brothers’ adventure in the goblin caves.

He insisted on using minis and a map this time, but I insisted he finish it the way he’d began it — dice and paper only. To compromise, I pulled out a couple of painted minis to represent our two characters, so that he could have them there to look at during play. Next time, I promised him a map.

Dwarfio and Morgan

Continue reading »

Teaching My Son D&D Next

 games  2 Responses »
Jul 052012
 

The budding adventurer

My son Daniel just turned eight years old, and I’m happy to say he has the spark of a gamer in him. He loves video games, especially Mario, Angry Birds, and Skylanders. On the tabeltop, he really likes Battleship and Zombie Dice. He also gets a kick out of things like BeyBlade and Ninjago and other things where you fling plastic toys at each other. So I knew that he’d eventually be a shoe-in for RPGs.

Getting him to play tabletop RPGs has been tricky, though. I had limited success with Newbie DM’s excellent RPGKids last year, but he got bored when he wasn’t in combat we only played a couple adventures. I’ve also tried to get him interested in tabletop miniatures games, but the ones he’s curious about — WarMachine and Malifaux, the ones he sees me playing — are still a little too over his head.

Yesterday, though, I saw a chance to act. He’s older now; he comes with me to the FLGS and he asks about the games I play; the streamlined D&D Next rules made them seem like a good choice for introducing him to a “real” RPG; and, I had the day off for Independence Day. So I took the attack of opportunity on the situation and sat him down for an introductory session. Continue reading »

Deities and Domains in My D&D Next Campiagns

 games  4 Responses »
Jul 042012
 

In developing my Kingdoms of Barien material, I have wandered into the tall weeds of religion, and I’m having a hard time finding my way out.

When it comes to D&D and homebrew campaign worlds, I always find religion to be a challenging element. I have this weird obsession with crafting the myths, legends, and customs of the worlds I create, often before I’ve gotten down to basic details like mapping out the land or naming cities.  This habit usually means, first and foremost, sacking the standard D&D pantheon of gods. And that means more elbow grease as a DM, because clerics need religious specifics — not just for role-playing, but as part of their character creation. Continue reading »

What I’ve Been Doing Instead Of Playing D&D Next

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Jul 012012
 

As I said last time, I have lost interest in playtesting this iteration of D&D Next. Without a regular group to go to, or rules beyond third level, or balanced encounter building, or a way to make statted NPCs, I really haven’t been compelled to play. Also, I want the next iteration NAOW so I can keep blogging in earnest, and so that the jackanapes on Twitter have new things to crab about. [Seriously, the #dndnext hashtag has gotten horrible to read.]

But since I want to keep blogging, I thought I’d talk about the campaign I’m readying for whenever the more complete and campaign-playable iteration of the rules hits.  Continue reading »

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