Addendums...or "Addenda," I Suppose

Just quick hits today:

• My guest co-hosting gig on the Power Source podcast is up. Click on the link to download.

• One thing I should have mentioned in yesterday's "Getting Better At D&D" post: The "make a bunch of characters, just so you feel the decision points" exercise is worth doing even if you're the Dungeon Master. If you're the DM, try doing the classes at your table at one of those benchmark levels: 5th or 11th (or 21st if you're in the deep end of the pool). You'll learn a lot of character nuances that have been obscured from your view (and you might catch some player shenanigans, too).

• I think I mentioned this when we were recording the Power Source podcast, but it's worth noting that in a cooperative game like D&D, getting "better" at doesn't directly improve your play experience. I've seen countless tables of noob D&D players--both casually and from behind the two-way mirrors at WotC--and they're extracting just as much enjoyment out of the game as an expert player...even though those junior-high noobs are doing it wrong.

Out of Context: Humbug, shoe kid! Humbug!

Music: The xx, xx

Getting "Better" at D&D: An Occasional Series, Part 1

Making Characters, All the Way Up

One of the things I did at Wizards back in the day was create and then maintain what we called the "Pre-Fab Four:" Mialee the wizard, Jozan the cleric, Tordek the fighter, and Lidda the rogue. Each one lived in its own Excel spreadsheet, with one tab for each level. Whenever we needed a party for a playtest (or just for benchmarking), we'd print out the relevant level. It wasn't the prettiest character sheet, and it wasn't the smartest spreadsheet (though it did do basic calculations for you). It worked, though—we used the Pre-Fab Four year after year.

For 3.0 we actually had all of the "iconics"—Krusk, Vadania, etc.—statted up 1-20. I did first drafts on about half of those and second drafts on nearly of all 'em. Whew!

And along the way we killed a lot of trees. The spreadsheets had a bug we never could squash where the "Number of Copies" field always had an arbitrarily large number…19,000 or so. You had to remember to fix that each time you printed, or the printer would merrily empty itself of paper creating a huge stack of Liddas for you.

Anyway, this was before DDI and before the character builder. So making those PCs one at a time was a handcrafted effort. My mandate was to make straightforward but not suboptimal choices. Tordek, for example, was a sword-and-board (OK, sword and axe) fighter rather than some sort of spiked-chain wunderkind. I wanted any intermediate-level D&D player to be able to sit down and play a Pre-Fab Four character right away.

Make characters from level 1 to level 20 four times in a row—gear and all—and you get good at it, eventually. (Or at least you get more efficient.) But it still took hours…maybe a day for the nonspellcasters and more than that for Mialee and Jozan. Nowadays DDI and a less gear-centric game would make it a lot faster…except that there are 30 levels now.

Handcrafting the Pre-Fab Four made me a lot more aware of what each class was capable of, which items, feats, and spells were key…all sorts of stuff. And I'm pretty sure that a similar effort in 4e would make anyone a better D&D player.

Do It Yourself

So here's one way to get better at D&D: Take your favorite character class and build it one level at a time, gear and all, until you hit 30th level. Trust me: You will become an utter brainiac about your class.

Alternatively, pick a specific level—5th and 11th are solid choices—and make characters at that level for lots of classes. Try making a 5th-level character for the class of every other player at your table. You'll be amazed at how much you learn about your buddies' PCs. You will become Mr. Teamwork at your table.

I'd suggest that rather than going for esoteric builds, you stick with "straightforward and solid choices." Remember, you're doing this to learn, not to "win" at D&D with your extreme power-munchkin-sauce.

Don't stress out too much about the choices you make. That's not the point. The point is to put yourself in assessment mode—to feel the "this power or that power?" question at each level. If you do that, you learn about both the options you chose and the options you didn't choose.

And look at it this way: Your choices will certainly be better than the DDI Character Creator's Auto-Pick function! (Seriously, they should just turn that function off. No guidance is better than horrible, misleading guidance.)

Out of Context: Don't you dare call me toffee-nosed!

Music: Black Crowes, Amorica

Some quick business stuff

I've been busy the last few weeks. Let's see...

• I'm the managing editor of the Internet Review of Science Fiction. Still getting up to speed there, but it's fascinating to take a more academic look at goings-on in the SF world. And as one of my first acts, I talked them into adding SF/Fantasy games to their repertoire. I even had a hand in setting the topic of the first few "Gamenivore" review columns. You'll see the reviewer's thoughts on Eclipse Phase over at IROSF. Hint: It's not as glowing a review as you saw here a few months back.

• I have a new job: Senior Writer at an MMO startup. Can't tell you the name of the company, but not for the usual nondisclosure reasons. Our desired company name (and various variations) is still going through the trademark process. So I work for a company with no name, basically. Love the startup vibe, though, and man are the other nine people who work here sharp.

• I was the guest co-host on the Power Source podcast over the weekend. It should "air" soon. It was fun to sit behind a microphone and just talk D&D for a while. I missed that more than I thought.

Out of Context: Where's that confounded bridge?

Music: Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms

When did we become "The Man?"

Something I noticed when I was flipping through recent D&D adventures...how come our D&D characters are agents of "The Man" nowadays?

I don't have a complete collection of 4e adventures, so I can't claim to be comprehensive. But in nearly every adventure I flipped through, the PCs are either the agents of the authorities or they're acting congruent to those interests.

Where are the rebels? Where are the capers? Where are the heists?

Some of this is a natural consequence of the "Points of Light" proto-campaign. Back when we were designing it, we talked a lot about "dark points of light"--and yes, we were aware of how dumb that term sounds.

A "dark point of light" is a spot where local authority has coalesced, but it's tyrannical/pathological/evil/just-plain-mean authority. And the PCs need to go there and bust that shit up.

I don't see much evidence of PCs getting the chance to stick it to The Man in, what, a year and a half of adventures?!? So adventure writers, let's get on the case! We need to overthrow some dudes who are duly constituted authorities--but evil.

And we need some morally ambivalent stuff. Give me an Ocean's Eleven-style caper adventure where the quest isn't "Help The Man" so much as it's "Get...Paid..."

Set the wayback machine for the mid-'80s, and you'll an adventure landscape replete with plenty of "let's get rich!" adventures. Lots of moral ambivalence--why do you think there's a bank in the Keep on the Borderlands? So we can knock it over! And there's a fair amount of "stick it to the evil overlord" in there, too.

At some point, maybe we got too genteel. I don't know. But I'm tired of getting deputized by the proverbial sheriff to go and clear out a nest of bad guys. I shot the sheriff, all right? Maybe I did it just to rob the bank and burn the whole town down. Maybe the sheriff had it coming. But I'm tired of being the sheriff's monkey-boy, that's for sure.

Out of Context: Brains should be spelled with one "a." Or five.

Music: Jeff Buckley, Grace

Musings on the Nov. 17 D&D update

Last week, my former colleagues at WotC published a big patch to the D&D rules. And this was a big one--not big in the sense that any single change is overwhelming, but the accumulation of mid-range changes is...big.

Big enough that the good folks over at the Character Optimization Board have a lot of revising to do on those terrific class guides.

Big enough that, thanks to a respec from a kindly DM, my githyanki orbizard became a warlock last night. (I'm pouring out the proverbial 40-oz. for my dead bloodclaw and orb of ultimate imposition homies.)

Big enough that even if I were strictly a "civilian" D&D gamer (and not a former D&D game designer and occasional adventure author), I'd definitely pay for D&D Insider and stop buying the actual books. There are enough changes this month, spread out over enough books, that I don't think I could trust what's on the written page anymore. Each discrete change wasn't huge, but they weren't just fixing typos, either. The bulk of the Nov. 17 changes matter. They would noticeably impact play at your table.

If you've got the Character Builder and the Compendium, you're good to go. Especially if you're using something like iplay4e.com. But so much has changed in the dead-tree versions of those books. The updated, electronic version of the game is substantively different now.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about the D&D business model anymore. (And to be clear, I have zero insight into what it looks like nowadays.) It's certainly conceivable that those DDI subscriptions make up for lost physical book sales among those of us who are going the all-electronic route. Given the way game stores are disappearing from the landscape and given the way book chains are getting hammered (will there be a Borders after April?), it's clear that WotC needs new ways to get their stuff out there.

But I do know this: Opting for DDI is definitely saving me money (some of which would have wound up in WotC's pocket), and it's delivering a better experience at the table. I wonder whether the bean-counters in Renton are as happy as I am, though. 'Cause I sure would be buying actual D&D books if DDI didn't exist.

Oh, and on a side note: I'm writing a 30th-level adventure right now. God, I love the deep end of the pool.

Out of Context: Four things greater than all things are/Women and Horses and Power and War.

Music: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue

Getting Started in EVE Online

I have a couple buddies who are a week or two behind me in EVE Online. I figured I'd type out a couple tips here so they're in one convenient place. Most is wisdom gleaned from elsewhere, but I've thrown my own thoughts in there, too.

Almost all of this can be done on a trial account. And if an MMO hasn't hooked you by the end of the free trial, it doesn't deserve you, your time, or your money.

Take Time on Your Portrait and Name
You'll be staring at it as long you're playing EVE--and there's no way to change it. So get something you want to look at. One other thing to consider: Much of the time, you'll be looking at a small, icon-size version of your portrait. Make sure the three main elements (your head, your shoulders, and the background) aren't equally light or equally dark. Shoot for light/medium/dark, split up however you like.

Likewise, you're stuck with your name. So make sure it's cool.

(Note from the future: As I was typing this, Tycho from Penny Arcade was thinking in parallel. Check it, yo.)

Play Through the Tutorial
The "Crash Course" tutorial is pretty good. It takes a couple hours, depending on how much you explore the interface. When you're done, you should have some cash, a ship--and most importantly, you'll have a decent idea of whether EVE is for you. If you're intrigued, keep going. But if that wasn't interesting, move on to some other game.

Play Through the "Career Advancement" Missions
You'll get three dudes who each have an eight-part quest line. Play all three, all the way through. The order doesn't matter, probably--although I did the soldier one first and got a combat-worthy frigate that I used in the mining and trading mission strings. You'll get several ships and some new skill books with these missions. And more importantly, you'll get a taste of the different roles you can play in EVE.

Buy Skill Books
At this point, the gravy train of free stuff is largely over. Visit the market and buy whatever skill books you want/need. The certificates screen is a useful guide. Certificates don't do anything in and of themselves. It's a useful way to describe "skills you'll need if you want to fly that badass cruiser," though.

Learn to Learn
Your first priority should be to acquire skills that enable game activities. For example, if you want to outfit that new Tristan with a scout drone, go ahead and get the Drones skill and spend the minutes required to get level 1 in it. But early in the game, you don't need higher levels of the skills. The NPC ships you face early on...well, they aren't exactly ninjas.

Instead, train the Learning skill and the five Attribute-specific training skills (Iron Will, Eidetic Memory, and so on) up as high as you can, as soon as you can. Why? They reduce your training time for every subsequent skill you learn...including themselves!

When you visit the market, you'll also see five other Attribute-specific learning skills that are crazy expensive (from your vantage point as a noob, anyway). Those stack with the basic five learning skills, and you'll max those out when those prices aren't quite so daunting.

Don't Fly Anything You Can't Lose
Yes, get insurance, and yes, you should watch your accumulated skill points so you know when to upgrade your clone. But don't rely on clones and insurance payouts to get you back on your feet. Your hull may be insured, but you'll lose all those fittings and whatever's in your hold if somebody blows you up. And if they destroy your escape pod, your clone will wake up just fine, but you won't have any cyberware you bought. ('Cause it's a clone, see?)

My initial thought is to keep three-quarters of my wealth in my wallet and fly around with the remaining quarter. But that's just a rule of thumb to guide my newbie explorations. Once I'm established, a better metric would be something like, "Fly around in something that takes no more than x hours of foo to replace." I'm not sure what my tolerance for x is. And "foo" is an activity: mining, courier missions, Traveller-style trading, missions, "ratting" (beating up NPC pirates and taking their stuff), or whatever my chosen "pleasant and reasonably lucrative grind activity" is. Speaking of which...

Find a "Pleasant and Lucrative" Grind Activity
This task is where I am in the game right now. I'm spending an evening or two doing each of the following, keeping track of how much ISK I make. It's not the most scientific undertaking, and the "answer" doesn't have to hold for more than the medium term. It's as much an exploration of different roles as it is an exercise in finding economic efficiency.
* Mining, probably in a 0.6 or 0.5 system. I have neither the firepower nor the friends to go for the really lucrative stuff. But I'm a noob, so that's just fine.
* Missions. Telling my starmap to show me systems with available agents was a revelation. Lots to do there.
* Ratting. Gotta spend a little on salvage sensors, etc., but this might be right up my alley as a grinding activity.
* Trading. Again, I have neither the capacity nor the knowledge to make a killing on the market. But me and my freighter can probably make a "bruising."
* Contracts. The courier stuff is what I'm thinking here. You can't do this stuff on a trial account. This is a "can you read the contract and adequately assess the risk?" as much as anything else.

Out of Context: "Why do I have to be the salt shaker?"
Music: Jeff Buckley, Grace

More on Eclipse Phase

When I'm not at my weekly D&D game, playing EVE Online on the PC, or playing Left 4 Dead on the XBox, I'm goofing around with Eclipse Phase. I'm thinking about starting a minicampaign--either with the supplied rules or after a wholesale conversion to something more like 4e. That's not a knock on the existing Eclipse Phase rules. It's just that my supply of available players tilts heavily toward expert-level 4e players (wonder why?), and they're mostly older guys who have an innate resistance to the timesink of learning a new rules set.

As I said last month, I'm intrigued by Eclipse Phase for two reasons. First, the game itself is simultaneously cyberpunk, postapocalyptic, and hard SF. But those elements don't seem stapled together. The backstory makes them cohere rather nicely. Second, the reusable body as an answer to the death question...that's fantastic.

There a few quibbles I struggle with, of course. Reasonable game designers differ on whether it's better to start a core rulebook with character generation and only a veneer of world detail, or really spread the world out in front of the reader, then get on with character generation after the game has established its context. I'm militantly in the former column, and the fact that I don't get even a whiff of the actual game until page 114 and no character creation until page 130...well, insert exasperated fist-shaking here.

Second, I have a problem taking uplifted animals seriously--and that says more about me than it does about the concept. I loved Startide Rising, to be sure, but I can't help but consider chimps and dolphins as comedy delivery devices, not menaces. Like I said, it's a problem that exists within the nest of vipers that is my head.

Out of Context: The life of this clean desk is perpetuated in righteousness.
Music: Pearl Jam, Backspacer